


It All Started With the Fight

by Emilys_Girl



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Blood, Criminal Minds Season 5, Criminal Minds suspect behavior season 1, F/M, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hetty knows everything, NCIS LA season 1, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, POV Emily Prentiss, Protective Emily Prentiss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 88,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emilys_Girl/pseuds/Emilys_Girl
Summary: Emily has done a lot more then just one undercover operation. So when G Callen calls with a problem, what else was she supposed to do?
Relationships: Emily Prentiss/Mick Rawson, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/William LaMontagne Jr., Sam Cooper/Beth Griffith
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	1. The Call

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Most Dangerous Tribe](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14180718) by [FreeWrite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreeWrite/pseuds/FreeWrite). 



> This work starts right before Criminal Minds episode 5-18 begins, and diverges from canon from there on.

Chapter 1

A buzzing noise slowly infringed on Emily’s state of unconsciousness. She fumbled at the bedside table for her phone and managed to get it up to her ear. “Prentiss” she said groggily, not bothering to move from under her pile of blankets.

“Good morning, Prentiss.” Hotch said. She could hear a faint trace of amusement in his voice.

“Case?” She asked, yawning, and ran a hand through her tangled hair.

“Yes. And, you do realize it’s past noon?” He said, his amusement still mostly concealed.

“And I was so hoping for an actual day off. I went out with a handful of old friends last night. They all have amazing livers.” She groaned at the memory.

“Fortunately, mine isn’t all that much worse.”

“Good. Meet the team on the plane, one hour. We have a long flight to San Francisco ahead of us.” Hotch ordered, all traces of amusement gone, and only waited long enough to hear her “Yes, sir” before he hung up.

She rushed around the house, and after getting ready for the day, somehow managing to stuff everything she needed for a potentially long case into her go bag. She always packed enough of whatever she needed for a case that the one bag would last two weeks, even if the case might not last that long, because there had been numerous times where a case was only predicted to last a few days, but instead took weeks. Fortunately, her entire closet was organized so that she could pack for whatever weather that might be needed in a matter of moments. She was just glad that they were leaving cold DC for slightly warmer San Francisco, which at least didn’t have snow, unlike the case that they had last week in Maine. Despite her years of living in Russia, Emily didn’t like snow and cold all that much. She shoved the last of her ‘mild winter’ clothes into her suitcase and dragged it downstairs, grabbing her laptop bag and all of its accessories, tossing them in the entryway. She slipped into the kitchen, and with a mournful look at her full fridge, which would likely have all gone bad by the time they got home, grabbed an apple out of the bowl. Sergio’s plaintive mewl stopped her from rushing out the door as she stopped just long enough to pour him some food. Emily grabbed her things and rushed out the door, just barely managing to get to the airport just in time.

She pulled her car up next to JJ’s in the FBI parking area of the airport, and hopped out of the car. JJ was standing at the trunk of her car, and Emily joined her at the trunk of her own car. “You look half dead.” JJ said.

“I feel half dead.” Emily grimaced and wished for sunglasses, even if it was October and cloudy. “I went out with a group of old coworkers last night.”

“So now would be a bad time to mention that Garcia said we should have a girls night when we get done with this case?” JJ grinned

“Definitely.” Emily grimaced and pushed the trunk button on her key fob, and took a step forward as it popped open. “Do you know anything about this case?” She asked.

“No, I think Hotch was told about it by someone else, it didn’t come across my desk.” JJ said. Both of their heads popped up as they heard the familiar squeal of tires going way too fast for the road they were on.

“Twenty bucks says he’s going to get another speeding ticket in the next month?” Emily offered.

“Hell no. Everyone knows he’s going to get another speeding ticket soon. He drives like he’s chasing a suspect twenty four seven.” JJ laughed.

They both smirked at each other as Derek pulled into the parking lot and parked his car beside JJ’s, Reid hopping out of the passenger seat. They grabbed their suitcases out of the back seat of the truck, and came over to stand next to JJ and Emily. “You look half dead Prentiss. “Derek laughed.

“Yes, I do.” Emily groused. “Now, will you stop mentioning it?” She would have been more pissed if she didn’t know that, with a few hours and a lot of water she would be back to perfectly normal. If there was anything long term undercover work had done for her, it was to teach her to work in almost any condition, and how to hide things. The fact that she had a really high alcohol tolerance helped, and if she had wanted, none of her team would have thought she had gone drinking at all. That would require a lot heavier make up, though, which would be commented on by JJ, if no one else, and she hated lying to people, especially something as innocent as going for drinks with friends. Not that she was going to tell them who the friends were, though. It would raise far too many questions that she didn’t want answered.

“Never.” Derek grinned, as Hotch pulled up, with Rossi right behind him.

“Morgan.” Hotch growled as he stepped out of the car.

“What?” Morgan grinned, but Emily could see the slight hints of tension in his body- the curse of being a profiler.

“I was right behind you 5 miles ago. And you got here 2 minutes, at least, before I did. Do I even want to know how fast you were going?” Hotch frowned. “Do you really want to have to go to traffic school again? Because I will not hesitate to ask Garcia to put you in the worst, most awful, annoying class that she can find.”

The entire team laughed at Derek's disgruntled face, gathering their things and walking towards the plane. Once on the plane, they waited until they were up in the air to start talking about the case. Hotch quickly gave them the overview- the dead druggies, the missing girls and fathers and that Cooper had a theory.

Rossi had stood up the second the seat belt lights went off, and returned with a cup of coffee. “What do we know about the past years victims?” he asked, standing behind Reid’s chair.

“The tenderloin district is a high concentration of drug addicts and homeless people. All of the victims have been transients.” Reid told him.

“So this unsub's choosing easy targets that won’t be missed. He’s not concerned with the challenge of the hunt. All these victims are part of a larger plan.” Derek mused, looking over the pictures attached to the file.

“Which he executes in the same few days every year.” JJ finished, glancing over at him.

“Reid, did you find any significance to the dates?” Hotch asked.

“Nothing historical. It’s got to be personal for the unsub.”

“JJ you and Reid hit the San Francisco P.D. Rossi and Prentiss to the dumpsite. Morgan and I will go to the Coroner's office. Nobody should expect to get a lot of sleep for the next 3 days.” Hotch said grimly, and Emily winced inwardly. She hated the extreme rush, no sleep cases. Fortunately thanks to the amount of coffee that she had drank in the last hour, she was now feeling normal, as if she hadn’t gone drinking the night before.

“What about Cooper’s team?” Rossi asked. “You said he had a theory.”

“He believes that whoever is murdering these homeless men is also abducting fathers and daughters and killing them once the transients have been disposed of.” Hotch told them. Emily thought it made sense. It would be one thing if fathers and daughters had disappeared one year, but every year. That was more then a theory, it was a pattern. And yes, San Francisco was a big city, but the timing could not be ignored.

“So we’ll investigate the dead men, and his team can see if there is a missing father and daughter.”

“Why isn’t his team on the jet now?” Emily asked. Given how much the upper brass of the FBI liked penny pinching, she wouldn’t have thought that they would pay for two jets to fly from the same places with what was likely hours of each other.

“Because the Director wouldn’t authorize them joining the investigation.” Hotch told her.

“They are working against the Director's orders?” Rossi said, sounding mildly shocked.

“We need to concentrate on the dead men abducted from the tenderloin. Cooper’s team can help determine if there is a missing father and daughter and whether it’s connected to our case.” Hotch explained

“Or you could get in serious hot water with the director if he thinks that you are helping to defy him.” Emily said wincing. She would not want to be anywhere near the ass chewing that would come from that.

“No. Hotch is right. I’ve known Sam Cooper for 20 years, and I’ve never seen him defy an order. If he feels this strong about a hunch, we need to help him however we can.” Rossi told them.

“Ok, everyone. Look over the files again, and if anything pops out at you, bring it up. Otherwise, get some rest. You are going to need it.” Hotch told them.

* * *

Emily sighed and stretched as the plane came to a halt on the tarmac. She hated the long plane flights- at some point in the journey, they always ran out of things to discuss about the case, and either went to sleep, or were consigned to boredom. Emily, despite the fact that she knew that they were going to be working on very little sleep the next three days, was completely unable to rest. That was thanks to the fact that she slept in till noon, she slept 9 hours that night, and her body was used to sleeping only 4 or so hours while there were open cases, and once she got used to sleeping that little, it was hard for her to sleep anymore unless she really needed it.

After getting off the plane, she and Rossi headed to one of the government issued black SUVs waiting for them, and spent the drive complaining how unsubs always liked to hide their kills in the most isolated spots that they could find, even in the middle of a major metropolitan city. She really wished that she had decided to wear her combat boot and black cargo pants ensemble that she usually favored when she might have to do anything that might include hiking instead of her pantsuit and heels. She had decided against it this morning because the last thing that she wanted was to look casual while looking like death. After an 45 minutes of swearing, which included “Why does it take almost an hour to go 18 stupid miles!” and “I really really really hate rush hour!” and “Can’t you see the flashing lights dumbass move out of my way!” they finally arrived at Presidio Park.

A very helpful young officer led them into the park, where Detective Ekler was waiting, standing next to the roped off crime scene. After the usual pleasantries, Rossi got down to business “Have all of the dumpsites been this isolated?” He asked.

“He keeps away from the main paths” Detective Ekler nodded “Never dumps them in lighted areas.”

“So he had to have studied the terrain beforehand. He’s organized.” Emily said, studied the leaf cluttered area around them.

“And physical enough to haul a body a long way on his own.” Rossi agreed.

“What can you tell us about the victims?” Emily asked Detective Ekler.

“They were all living on the streets. No witnesses. Our guess is that he managed to lure them, promising food or drugs.” he told them.

“Were any reported missing?” Rossi asked.

“No, we do know they all came from the same few blocks in the Tenderloin.” Elker told him, and Emily and Rossi frowned at each other, a few blocks was a very tiny hunting zone, which probably means his comfort zone was equally small, and somewhere in or near the hunting zone. At least if he was only hunting in those few blocks, he would be semi easy to catch.

Her phone buzzed, and she glanced down at it. “It’s Hotch. He wants all to group up and go over what we found.” She told Rossi, and he nodded.

“I have to stay here until the crime scene is fully processed, just in case they find anything else.” Ekler told them.

“Ok, we’ll see you back at the station later.” Emily smiled, and she and Rossi turned around, and managed to get back to their car without getting lost in the maize of trees. After another round of rush hour traffic, they got to the Tenderloin station of the SFPD. Once there, the team went over the profile several times, adjusting it with the new information, until Cooper called Hotch sometime after one am. It was agreed since they weren’t likely going to be able to get any more intel, that they should all take the opportunity to get some sleep and they would all meet at Cooper’s mysterious base in the morning.

* * *

The next morning, Emily woke earlier then she thought she would, considering their late night, and took the opportunity to get a shower before JJ, who she was sharing a room with. They always shared a room when possible, both for the safety of it, and so the Bureau didn’t complain about expenses as much. She dressed in another pantsuit, and waited until JJ was ready to leave by looking over the file again. Once JJ was done, they met the rest of the team downstairs, picking at the meager offerings of the hotel’s continental breakfast before they went to go meet Cooper’s team.

While her team started filing in Cooper’s team on what they had come up with as a profile, Hotch and Coop went to visit the poor kidnapped girl’s mother. It wasn’t long before Hotch called- with the disturbing news of what had been done to keep the mother silent, of what would likely happen to her, and one more thing- that there was another body in Prediso Park.

As they got out of the car, Emily let loose the question that she had been wondering about ever since she met Mick “How does a Brit-” She started

“A handsome Brit.” Mick interrupted.

She barely kept her lips from twitching, but continued her question like she hadn’t been interrupted “How does a Brit end up in the FBI?”

“It’s pretty simple. Cooper and I bumped into each other a few times. 10 months ago they told him he could handpick a new team. He called. I came. Passport didn’t matter.” Mick told her.

“Huh.” Emily said, wondering how his government and hers didn’t pitch a fit over that. “So, is it true that no one in the British special forces is allowed to admit they are in it?” She asked, smirking. She hadn’t looked him up, but it was in the way he moved, the way he acted- he definitely had special forces training.

“I don’t know. I’d have to ask around about that one.” To anyone other then a profiler, that was a no, but as a profiler, she could tell that he had been in a unit, she just couldn’t tell which one.

She laughed, then kept digging “You know, there’s a lot of rumors about your boss.”

“Yeah?” Mick said.

“One I heard was when he left the BAU, he was doing psychological ops overseas.

“Well I’ve never been big on rumors” Mick tried to waving it off, but she continued.

“So I don’t suppose you're going to tell me just where you two bumped into each other.” Emily asked.

Mick paused and looked at her for a long moment. “I heard you spent quite a bit of time in Europe, working undercover ops for the CIA…”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.” Emily smirked at him. Internally, she felt the butterflies start fluttering in her stomach. She had done her best to forget what she had done for the CIA, and had thought she had wiped all traces of those ops existence from her brain. There were no FBI files detailing what she had done, none that were anything more then black lines, a handful of random words and letters, and one word written in red- CLASSIFIED.

“I’ll tell you I trust the man with my life.” Mick said, abruptly jumping back to their previous conversation. “I’ll tell you that I’d die for the man.” And with the look that he was giving her, she was sure that he would, as he turned to go to the actual crime scene, and she stared at him dumbfounded. After a brief conversation with the locals, which included her having to convince them that Mick was actually FBI, to the man’s ire, they got to the body.

“So, the Tenderloin’s full of junkies who would be easy to control, but the first victim had no drugs in his system, and this geezer looks pretty healthy too. Except for the whole dead thing.” She watched as he picked up the victim’s hand “He’s got skin under his nails.” He shifted, deep in thought “Didn’t the first victim have scratches on his chest?”

“Yeah, we assumed he fought back against the unsub, but these victims might actually be fighting each other.”

“Exactly.” Mick said, sounding slightly smug.

“I take it that you are about to wow me with a theory.” she said, waiting.

“The first victim is dumped before the fathers and daughters are taken. Why?”

“Because he wants to send a message to the wife that he means business, make sure she doesn’t call the police.”

“And it also sends a message to the prisoners he already has. You lose a fight, you die.” he said grimly. “What do those welts look like to you?’ he asked.

“My guess, they are wounds from rubber bullets.” she said, wondering where he was going to go from there.

“Like they use to control rioters, or prison inmates.”

“Ok.” She said, waiting for him to continue. He didn’t disappoint.

“I think the unsub’s been locked up. It’s where he learned to control his own prisoners.”

“Well, if he’s learned how to dominate them, why are they fighting each other?” she picked at the weak point.

Mick shook his head “It has to be part of his plan- to watch them beat the hell out of each other.”

“And then the loser is executed.” she finished. It fit with what they knew, they were finally getting somewhere with the unsub!

“Admit it, I’m starting to grow on you.” he smirked.

To avoid answering, she pulled out her phone “Hotch, it’s Emily, we have an idea about what he might be doing with the victims. We may be able to give the profile- Hold on a second.” She pulled the phone away from her mouth and turned to Rawson, who was calling someone else “Hey, who are you calling?” She whispered.

“If I’m right there's somewhere else we need to be delivering that profile.” he told her.

She moved her phone back so she could talk to Hotch “We’re coming back to base, and we’ll give you what we have figured out then.” she told him, and heard his agreement before hanging up the phone.

Mick had also hung up “I call shotgun.” He smirked.

“As if I actually want you driving.” she scoffed “You’d end up on the wrong side of the street, and not even the flashing lights would save us from being hit.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that I passed my Quantico driving course exam with flying colors.”

“Yeah, but after how many tries?” She rolled her eyes as she climbed into the car.

“Hey!” he said, outraged, and she just snickered.

* * *

After she and Mick had met up with the rest of the team, they shared the profile that they had created. The combined teams had agreed that it fit, then split up to deliver it. She and Mick went off to a police station to deliver the profile, and when they came back, they met up with Cooper and waited for Hotch to get back from his delivery of the profile at a different police station.

“The police department has the profile.” Hotch said as he stepped across the wet road. “They’ve tripled patrols in the Tenderloin.”

“You know what? I think we need profilers out here, too. He could be out hunting for homeless men to fight the father.” Cooper said, and Emily nodded, profilers would see things that cops might not. He pointed at Mick “This kid- best sniper I’ve ever seen. He could view a lot of ground from the rooftop.”

“You’re comfortable on the ground solo.” Hotch checked with her.

She wanted to tell him that she had been in a lot worse situations then this alone, but merely said “Of course.”

“Cooper’s right. Maybe we can catch him trying to abduct another victim.” Hotch said and they all walked into Cooper’s base.

An hour later, night had fallen, and Emily was standing on a street corner, trying to find her killer. “So what are you wearing?” Mick said in her ear.

She glared up at his rooftop then said “A gun. Hey Mick, explain something to me. How come I’m out on the street and you’re sitting on your but up on some roof.” She didn’t have any problems with it, but was feeling slightly obvious in her suit, when surrounded by junkies. She would be fine, but would rather have been undercover- at least she could blend in that way.

“Well you heard the man.” Mick smirked- she could tell without even being able to see him. “Do you really want me to expound on my own prowess? It’s undignified.” she smiled, in spite of herself, and he continued “Stay on your headset. All his victims are coming from this 4-block radius.” he said, and she murmured a conformation.

An hour later Emily was tired and cold. She had had to flash her badge 5 times at random junkies hassling her before all of the rest seem to have gotten the message. So it was a relief when Mick started talking again “ Ok, I’ve got something. I’m not sure if it’s anything, but Southeast corner. See the guy clocking the junkie?”

“Care to expand on that? All I see are guys clocking junkies.” she said slightly frustrated. They had a number of false alarms already, and she really wanted to catch this guy.

“Grey shirt.” Mick added.

She peered through the crowd for a second, then said “yeah, I got him.”

“Stay close, I’m on my way.” Mick said, but Emily was already moving to intercept the potential unsub.

“He’s heading Southbound.” Emily reported, and the unsub saw her and spooked, sprinting away. Emily sighed and gave chase, hoping Mick got off his building soon to come and back her up. “FBI Stop!” she yelled the two most worthless words in law enforcement, wishing for once that it actually worked, but it didn’t, so she kept running. She labelled off the cross streets for Mick, trying to avoid the cars the unsub seemed intent on dodging. Why couldn’t he just run on the sidewalk, she wondered as she was slightly too slow to dodge a car, and she rolled over it’s hood, feeling her shoulder and side take the brunt of the impact. She knew that she would feel it later, but instead just rolled up and kept running. It wasn’t until the unsub turned into an alley that she was finally able to catch up and shove him against a wall. “Stop.” she yelled, breathless.

“I didn’t do anything!” the man said, his hands in the air, looking terrified of the two guns pointed at him.

“Why were you following that man?” Emily demanded.

“I knew he was holding, I just wanted a fix.” he said, and Emily paused. Mick was obviously on the same mind track as she was, because he holstered his gun and grabbed the man’s arm, pulling up the sleeves to reveal track marks. “I don’t distribute.” the man protested. Emily backed up, and holstered her gun- this wasn’t there guy. Mick looked at her, then shoved the junkie away.

“Get out of here.” he growled, and the junkie disappeared. Emily straightened, then winced, rubbing her side. “Are you ok?”

“Yeah, fine, just had a run in with a car when the moron was playing dodge a car. Why can’t they ever run on the sidewalks? No, they always have to run through the streets of major cities.” she complained.

Mick laughed, and they started walking back down the alley. “Or when they think that them and their one tiny revolver with only 6 bullets in it is going to be able to take down a dozen cops, who all have much better firepower. Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I managed to angle it right. And the car was mostly stopped anyway. One of the most stupid morons I had was this guy with a 2mm Kolibri, and there were 6 of us, and he actually tried to kill us. The thing is, he was a terrible shot, so all he could manage was to hit the cars, and even if he could even try to aim, we were all wearing vests, so that was obviously useless. Morgan fired a bullet that went right past his head, and he was on the ground whimpering on and on about police brutality and a violation of his constitutional rights.” Emily said, barely managing to repress the laughter that came with remembering the incident.

“Was he actually firing at you?” Mick sounded incredulous.

“He fired three shots. The first two went really wide. Like hitting the cars wide, and the third hit the car door that Rossi was standing behind. He was perfectly fine, just annoyed that he would have to drive a car with ding in it- the bullet didn’t even penetrate the aluminum! It was very funny- he went all Marine lecture on the idiot “if you don’t know how to fire a gun don’t own one, have you ever cleaned this thing?””

“Really, Rossi?” Mick raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, even Hotch was laughing, it was hysterical.” she grinned, rubbing at her ribs again. Then her phone rang, and she looked down at the screen. “Speak of the devil. It’s Hotch.” she grinned, and picked up the phone “Hey Hotch, just got another false alarm, we actually had to chase this one, he was just a junkie.”

“Nobody has gotten anything either, and we’ve scared off anyone who might be our unsub, so we are calling it a night. Even if it’s technically already morning.” Hotch sighed faintly- she could barely hear it, and she was used to trying to decipher Hotch’s various lack of expressions. “You and Rawson head back to the hotel, we will meet you there.”

“Ok, we are on our way.” Emily told him, and hung up the phone. As if thinking about the time was what caused it, she yawned. “Hotch wants us back at the hotel. What time is it?”

Mick checked his watch “3:30. Thank god, cause I really don’t want to chase anyone else tonight. I hate running down stairs full speed. I always feel like I’m going to miss a step and fall down the stairs on my face.” He yawned.

“I’ll go get the car while you get whatever you left up on that roof if you drive the rest of the way to the hotel.” Emily said with another jaw cracking yawn.

“So now you trust me to drive.” he smirked at her.

“Oh shut up, there are less cars for you to hit on the road now.” she just smirked back. “In all honesty I’m exhausted, and you look more awake then I do.”

He eyed her carefully, then nodded “If sniper training has done anything for me, it’s made sure that I could shoot someone after 48 hours of no sleep, drunk. I’m fairly sure I can drive a car.”

Emily groaned- this was such a bad idea. “Oh shut up Rawson.”

* * *

The next morning, despite the late night, they were all up and in Cooper’s base by 8:30. Everyone, even Hotch looked tired, and they had enough coffee to supply a Starbucks for a week. Cooper started off the day by crossing off the Day 2 on his chalkboard and circling Day 3- the last day they had to catch this guy for a year, or else they would be coming back next year. “Did your analyst get us the data?” Cooper asked. Garcia had spent all of the night and most of the morning finding anyone who could possibly fit the profile and sending all of the files to them. She was somehow still awake and coherent. Emily wondered how many all nighters she pulled without the team knowing about it. Emily suspected that that number was fairly high.

“Yeah, I can lay it out for you.” JJ told him.

“Good, let's cross-reference it against our suspect pool.” Cooper told them as Prophet’s phone rang.

“Hello.” Prophet said “Yeah we can be there. You up for a ride to San Quentin?” he asked Rossi as he hung up.

Rossi made a face and Cooper smiled “It’s like the old days, spending all of your time interviewing prisoners.”

“Don’t go getting all sentimental on me.” Rossi told him, and followed Prophet out the door.

Emily followed Mick over to where Hotch was standing over a pile of paperwork, with a folder in his hands. “What we got?” Mick asked.

“The profile says he spent time in prison. He probably lost a teenage daughter in a way that corresponds to the dates that he abducts and kills his victims.” Hotch told them, walking over to the table that Reid was standing behind

“We have the dates divided into 4 specific subsets. This group is teenage girls age 13 to 16 who were removed from their father’s care. These are deaths of teenagers the same age. The remainder are men arrested for violent crimes and anyone serving a prison sentence in the same window.” Reid told them in his typical rush of information.

“The stressor's in here somewhere. Let's find something that looks promising so we can start running background checks.” Cooper told them as Hotch fished his ringing phone out of his jacket. They all nodded and got to work on the pile of paper in front of them.

An hour of paper cuts and coffee later, Emily stared at the file and tried to resist the urge to chew her nail. She hated the habit that was born out of years of nerve wrecking undercover work and tried to keep from doing it as much as possible. “Find anything yet?” Hotch asked as he walked up.

“Not yet, and this one is a no go” Mick sighed, and tossed his file into the stack of the discarded ones.

“This one should be in jail for something, but he’s not our unsub” Emily threw her file on top of Mick’s.

“Well, keep working, he’s in there somewhere” Hotch said as he got a phone call from Morgan, and when he turned around, he had a lead “The McBride family went to a therapy center in the Tenderloin. The place also did evaluations for social services.”

“We profiled that the unsub might have had his daughter taken away from him.” Emily said- it fit, and if they could get the records they might have their unsub.

“If he was processed in the same place, then he would know how to target the fathers and daughters. Can I talk to your analyst?” he asked Hotch.

Hotch handed over his phone with a “Sure.” and Emily turned back to the papers on the table.

A half an hour later, Garcia called back, and Hotch put her on speaker. “All right, my tribe, I have a list of parents, evaluated by social services, who ended up losing custody. But as Cooper predicted, it is a lengthy tale of woe.” she told them

“We’ll use it to cross against the teenage girls who died on some of the dates in question. I’m going to start reading names. You tell me if they are on your list.” Hotch said.

As he started reading the names, Cooper’s phone rang and the team turned to him “Hey. Right sounds like a possible. Thanks Prophet.” he said and hung up “We have a name. John Vincent Bell.” he told the team

“One of the girls that died was Mandy Bell.” Reid said, and Emily once again wondered at his encyclopedic memory of random names and dates.

“Garcia, run the name John Vincent Bell against the family therapy list.”

“Shazam.” Garcia said triumphantly “Bell and his wife divorced, then the wife died, and Bell was declared incompetent to have custody of his daughter due to a host of mental health issues.”

“We got that one right.” Mick said.

“Oh Lord. And then, when Social Service Agents showed up to remove the girl, Bell beat one of them to death. He was given 7 years for manslaughter.” Garcia added, and Emily winced, mental health issues indeed.

“Yeah, during which time, his daughter was in a car accident. Looks like she survived three days on life support but eventually died of brain injuries.” JJ said, look at the file on the table.

“Ok, so Bell is making these men fight to the death just like he did.” Emily said. It fit- the three days, the forced fights, presumably for the life of the daughter. “He’s trying to prove he would do what any father would do.”

“Do we have an address?” Cooper asked.

“Uh, the only listing I have is a gym on hall street in the Tenderloin.” Garcia told them. “It belongs to Bell’s family. Hasn’t been operational in years”

“He got him.” Hotch said, and the team exploded into action, grabbing bulletproof vests and checking their guns, then running for the cars parked outside.

As they and the SWAT team pulled up to the gym, Emily just hoped that they were in time. They didn’t know what time that Bell killed the fathers and daughters, and it was dark out, fairly late. The two teams followed Swat into the building, finding the grim scene of a pool stained with blood, and the father chained to a pillar. There was no sign of Jane. The team split up to start searching the area for Bell, hoping he hadn’t gone far, with Cooper giving them directions from the air in a chopper.

“I need everybody on your radios, I’m going to be your eyes.” Cooper said in her ear, and Emily gave her assent, combing through streets alone, trying to keep to the area that Mick could see, just in case. The all heard Cooper’s triumphant “There. Right there. We got a visual. Turk and Franklin. Southeast corner.” Emily glanced at the nearest street sign- she was only a few blocks away. She turned and started sprinting in that direction.

“We’re two blocks away.” Morgan said in her ear, and Emily upped her pace, determined to get there at the same time despite the fact that Morgan was in a car and undoubtedly going much faster then her.

“Everyone be advised, he’s going to the roof. He’s going to the roof.” Cooper said, but Emily didn’t bother wasting any breath responding.

Emily managed to get to the parking garage only seconds after Morgan and Gina did, and followed them through the empty building. They caught up with Bell as he hit the furthermost corner of the roof “John Bell, FBI.” Morgan bellowed over the sound of the chopper above them. “Put the weapon down.”

“Don’t shoot me.” Jane pleaded hoarsely, tear tracks in her dirt covered cheeks.

“Drop the gun.” Emily pointed her gun at Bell.

“It’s over! Look around you.” Gina yelled as they slowly crept closer.

“Don’t do it, put it down!” Morgan hollered.

“You know what it feels like to lose your daughter. Do you really want to hurt someone else’s” Gina attempted to reason with Bell as he climbed up a set of stairs, still with his gun pointed at Jane. He shoved Jane towards them, and kept climbing up.

“Get off the wall!” Morgan raised his gun, following Bell and starting to move forward. Bell just looked at them, cocked his head, and jumped, with Morgan and Emily rushing forward to stop him, but they were far too late.

“Wait!” Mick's bark froze them the second they watched the unsub jump. “There is a secondary ledge, he’s alive, a few feet below you, and he still has the gun. If you poke your head out, he can easily shoot you, and without him cooperating, there is no way to get him off of it.” Mick's rushed explanation instantly relieved Emily that he managed to get it out. She was about to poke her head out just like he described, and she would have been dead.

“Thanks Rawson.” Morgan said, raising his gun back on the wall, not that he could shoot the unsub through it, but it was better then the gun pointing at the ground. Behind them Gina pulled Jane away and walked her towards the exit, just in case.

Emily frowned, trying to think of a way to get the unsub alive. “Rawson, can you see any way to get him alive that isn’t dangerous to law enforcement?” she asked, knowing that he could see the area much better then they could.

A few seconds of silence rung over the comms, deafening in their quietness. “No. He is in a fairly precarious position, he could fall fairly easily. If I shoot him, I can’t guarantee him not falling, either. Either way, we need to have agents clear out that area of sidewalk and road.”

Cooper relayed that order over to the San Francisco police, and it took five very tense minutes before he said “Ok, the ground’s clear, and Gina has Jane back with her parents. Mick can you see any other way out of this?” he asked, the wind from his chopper once again blowing Emily’s hair into her face, even with it up in a ponytail. She spent a few seconds wishing she had another hair tie, so she could put it in a bun, but pushed the thought away just as Mick responded. Gina ran back up the stairs, and lifted her gun back up, like Morgan, pointing it at a wall that the bullet likely wouldn’t make it through. Still, if nothing else, it would injure or scare the unsub.

“No, and he still has the gun pointed at where someone’s head would be.” he calmly responded.

“Ok, then take the shot.” Cooper said, and two sharp pops were heard.

“It’s all clear.” Mick said, a second later.

Emily and Morgan run over and peer over the ledge just in time to see the body slip over the edge and fall towards the ground.

“Thanks for saving my ass, Rawson.” Emily said.

“Yeah, ditto.” Morgan said.

“Anytime.” Mick said. “I like saving people. They usually buy me drinks afterward.” Emily could see him standing up in his perch, breaking his gun down.

“Whatever. How about we all go out, and Emily pays the bar tab.” Morgan said.

“Hey!” Emily said, outraged, but she was grinning, “Says the man who has used literally every excuse in the book to get out of paying, then made some more up! And what about last week?”

“Are you really going to let that stand?” Gina laughed, sweeping a strand of blonde hair out of her face.

“I forgot my wallet that one time!”

“How come I found it in about 30 seconds under the passengers side seat of your truck?” Emily challenged, laughing as they made their way down the parking garage. She caught sight of her hair in a window of one of the few cars left in the garage and grimaced, taking the ponytail out and trying to smooth it out, before putting it back up.

“It must have fallen out of my pocket.” Derek lied unconvincingly.

“You need to learn how to lie better.” Emily said, shaking her head.

“I can so lie.” he challenged.

“Yeah, to who? A toddler?” Gina laughed.

“Ladies, stop being so mean to the poor man.” Mick’s amused voice rang in their ears.

Emily snorted, and was about to respond with something along the lines of the fact that Derek so deserved it, but the buzzing of her phone cut her off. “Prentiss going off comms.” She said, abruptly professional “Got a call that everyone doesn’t need to hear.”

“Got it Prentiss, thanks. Everyone else cut down the chatter, please?” Hotch’s authoritative voice cut in, sounding slightly annoyed. He hated when they talked too much over coms when it didn’t have to do with the case. Prentiss could see why, as it would be aggravating to try to deal with the LEOs and have a bunch of people chattering in your ear at the same time. The coms were voice activated, so it's not like they could talk without making the coms transmit.

Emily just barely heard Mick’s disappointed sound before she yanked the earpiece out of her ear, and put the phone to it instead. “This is Prentiss.” She said.

“Do you always answer the phone so professionally, Emily?” An amused voice responded.

“No way? G! How are you?” She grinned, stopping and leaning against the concrete wall beside her. Derek stopped, waiting, but she waved him on. G and her had done enough classified things together that the last thing that was needed was someone overhearing their conversations.

“Ok. Slightly shot and very bored, but ok.”

“I heard about that. And I think you were slightly more then a little shot.” Emily winced. “Arkady was amazed you lived.”

“Wait, you heard from Arkady?” G said shocked. “I thought you heard from some LEO or another.”

“Nope, Arkady called me the day it happened to tell me. I think he might have been warning me. Who knows, with Arkady though. He told me that you were dead, though. I found out that you managed to survive from a local LEO who I called asking about it.”

“I haven’t heard from Arkady since Operation you know what 10 years ago!”

“Well, from the looks of it, he’s in LA and doing very well for himself. I looked into him after he called me, I hadn’t heard from him since I was playing barmaid and unofficial back up on that op. I noticed they didn’t come after me, and I was curious. I was on a case then in a middle of nowhere town in Ohio. Maybe because it was unofficial, and not even Stanhope and Taylor knew. Just me and you. Arkady only knew because he had met me when my mother was the US ambassador and he recognized my face.”

“Wow.” G said. “I don’t know if you had heard or not, but the case was cold, and I think you just broke it wide open.”

“Hey.” Emily snapped “I know that tone. You are not allowed to go all lone wolf on me G Callen. Call your partner. Call your boss. I have a lot of overtime I can spend. Or I can call some old contacts and they could “need” me for something. We will attack the lion’s den together.”

“Thanks Emily.” G said softly. “Look, where are you?”

“San Francisco. That's what, a 6 hour drive, or I could just hop on a plane. I’m going to go talk to my boss, and see what I could get away with doing from him, and if he refuses, I’ll call some old spook friends.”.

“Ok, and thank you Emily.” G said, sounding relieved.

“Be honest with me, how injured are you? Cause I will not hesitate to call Hetty if I think you are doing something stupid, and she will not be happy if she hears about this from this from me and not you.”

“That’s a fairly terrifying death threat.” G said, not sounding all that scared. “It’s been 6 months, Emily. I am about as healed as I will get. I’m mostly in shape. I don’t have any more physical therapy to do. If I were willing to do a desk job, I’d probably be at work right now. As it is, I’m about a month away from working. I’m fine, I’m ready to go, but my doctor refuses to let me do it.”

“Yes it is, and I will call her in about ten minutes, and if she hasn’t heard about this from you by then, I will not hesitate to tell her myself.” Emily said sternly. G had a tendency of lone wolfing if he thought he could get away with it. Fortunately, like any smart operative who knew her, he was terrified of Hetty. Emily certainly knew that she was too.

“Now I’m scared.” G laughed. “I swear I will call her once I hang up with you.”

“You better. I’m going to go do things, I’ll talk to you soon, ok?” Emily smiled. She waited for his acknowledgement, then hung up. She then ran down the parking garage, rejoining her teammates at the bottom.

“Emily, what's up?” Derek asked.

“A friend might be in trouble. Who knows. I’m going to go visit him, so I can talk to some of my informants and see what they know.” SHe said as Hotch walked up. “Hotch, I was wondering if I could use some of the ridiculous amount of time off that I have stored up.”

“Yeah, sure. Who is the friend?”

“G Callen, NCIS. He got shot a few months ago, and one of my informants called me, telling me that he was probably dead. I then called G’s boss, and she said that he wasn’t dead, just really injured. But the thing is, my informant shouldn’t have known anything- he’s most definitely not anyone that any federal agency would ever tell, especially with how classified the things that G does are. So I was going to track down my informant and demand answers. And if I’m there, I can keep G from going all lone wolf on us.”

“As long as you finish off all of your paperwork, I’m fine with it. Just try not to do anything that would get you arrested? And remember that you are off duty once the paperwork is finished.” Hotch said, with a faint hint of a smile.

“Prentiss might get arrested? For what?” Mick said, smirking as he walked up.

“Probably for wiping that smug smirk off your face.” Gina said, grinning.

“I have to go visit a friend.” Prentiss quickly explained.

“Where is the friend? We might be able to drop you off on our way back, it will save you money on plane tickets, anyway.” Hotch asked.

“My informant is in LA, and G’s meeting me there, so no, unfortunately.” She said, attention mostly on her phone. “And I now have a red eye out of Sf to LA, leaving at ridiculous o’clock in the morning.”

“And I was going to suggest that we go celebrate.” Mick said mournfully.

“We can totally celebrate, I just shouldn’t drink.” Emily said to the smiles of the group.

“Ok, then let’s wrap this case up, and then we can celebrate.” Hotch said, with a hint of a smile on his face.

That was how, three hours later paperwork finished and the case all wrapped up, Emily found herself standing in a circle of her coworkers, with a soda in her hand. They were trading weirdest ever cases stories, and she was having fun making her teammates wince, and trying to avoid the more classified things that she had done. It was especially annoying how Mick smirked at her wherever she had to do some on the spot editing. He’d probably looked her up, the asshole. Hopefully he hadn’t found anything too classified. She would interrogate him later though and tell him to quit flirting with her. Especially in front of both of their teams. Right now, she was enjoying some time spent relaxing. With what she was about to dive into, she would probably need it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work all started with one question- why did we not see any more then one undercover op of Emily's? Then I wondered who else would of known about Emily's past, and an answer came to me- Mick! For a long time, the idea sat in my ideas folder as four lines ""One I heard was when he left the BAU, he was doing psychological ops overseas./ "Well I've never been big on rumors" Mick tried to waving it off, but she continued./"So I don't suppose you're going to tell me just where you two bumped into each other." Emily asked./Mick paused and looked at her for a long moment."I heard you spent quite a bit of time in Europe, working undercover ops for the CIA…"" It sat like that for over a year, until I watch NCIS LA for the first time, and realized, that as an undercover operation, who was ex CIA, she would probably know G Callen and Hetty Lange, and the rest of the team. After that, the idea for this story wouldn't let me go- I wrote the first chapter faster then I've ever wrote anything before! I hope you like it, and please review!
> 
> Note- I have in no way shape of form a gun/criminology expert. I've never even fired a gun. Anything I mentioned in this chapter comes from research I found online. Sorry if I'm wrong!


	2. The Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emily hops on a plane to LA and finds more problems there then she expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a mixture of both NCIS LA 1X1 and 1X7. I hope you like it!

Chapter 2  
The plane touched down at the familiar sights of LAX, which she had been to twice this year alone on cases. For some reason, serial killers liked California. A flash of her badge got her past security without any problems about the gun holstered at her hip. After grabbing her bag in the claims area, she walked through the crowd to the road, where Callen was supposed to be waiting. 

She found him parked and leaning against a car in defiance to the no parking sign. “G!” she called, waving. He grinned and stood up, and she hugged him hard. “How are you?” 

“Better, now that we might have a lead.” he mumbled into her hair, relaxing against her. 

“Excuse me, sir, you can’t park here.” A nasally voice interrupted them, and Emily glanced up to see a cop.

“FBI.” “NCIS.” they said over each other, both flashing their badges. “Official business.” G managed to say with a straight face. “We were about to leave.” He added as the cop frowned at them. They quickly put actions to words, and tossed her suitcase into the back seat, before climbing into the car and smirking at each other.

“So, where do we start?” Emily asked, once they had pulled away from the curb.

“Sam is going to meet us at the boathouse, they have changed ops centers since I was last there, and apparently, it’s a little hard to find.”

“Twenty bucks says it at least looks condemned.”

“No bet! Our last three bases, and the backups have all been ugly to say the least.” G laughed, and then swore at a bad driver. 

“Only in LA.” Emily laughed. 

“What, the terrible bases, cause I know that DC has terrible drivers too.” G challenged her. 

“I’ve been working out of various identical looking police departments and the standard issue FBI fishbowl for the last few years, the bases! Though the driving sucks too, at least you guys don’t have snow!”

“God, I can’t imagine LA drivers and snow. That would be terrible. I’d quit. And move to somewhere that isn’t LA.” 

“Yeah, and go back to working for which agency? Cause I think you’ve worked for or with about all of them by now.”

“Hey!” He said, outrage on his face. Emily knew him well enough to know that it was all a lie, so she just grinned, staring out into the traffic.

“Really? Name an agency you haven’t worked with at some point, and I’m including the foreign ones.”

“I haven’t done much in south America. Mexico, yes, but not some of South America.” 

“Wasn’t there that one op that you swore took you into every country in South America?” she smirked. 

“Not every country. Just most of them.” G smirked at her. “And like you should be talking, you’ve worked in just about every country too.” 

“And God, do I stand out in most of them. Well, at least my imitations of a clueless American tourist is just about perfect.”

“Remember the one that you were blonde, in-was it Paris?”

“I think it was. My hair never recovered from all of the dying. God I hated that op.” She winced as they pulled up into a parking lot near the ocean. “How do you discreetly get suspects into the boathouse?” she wondered “I mean, I can pull up to the police station, and nobody will mention an asshole trying to get away, because it’s a police station. But this is like a tourist central here.” 

“It’s a lost cause. We have a few back ways in, including a boat, but it’s hard to get a suspect on a boat. Most of the business owners have been read in, they think we are some sort of CIA intelligence unit, tracking down terrorists. Which is mostly true, so they don’t question anything. And the suspects are usually wondering why they are at the ocean in the first place, so they don’t put up a fight. And we have really close parking spots, so not many people even notice us. And we keep surfboards and kayaks in there so as long as we wander around with them on occasion, we are fine.”

“Huh. I’ve missed intelligence work.” Prentiss grinned. 

“Well, if you ever want a new job, it would be pathetically easy to convince Hetty to hire you.”

“Hell no, you guys see way too many grenade launchers and machine guns on a way too regular basis! I’ll keep chasing my psychos and thrill killers, with only coming for ops like this, thank you very much.” Emily laughed as they climbed out of the car, which was as close to the boathouse as G had promised.

“Come on, Sam is waiting for us inside.” he smirked his particular half smirk at her, his blue eyes glinting in the sun. “You want to try to scare the crap out of him?”

“Do I want to try to scare the crap out of a Seal? Of course I do.” she grinned. They had been partners enough times that he knew that she found it particularly entertaining to use her ‘spook skills’ to scare people.

“There’s a second entrance, you’ll have to climb up the side of the building, and get in through the window without making noise.”

“Never mind.” she said quickly. “If you haven't noticed, I’m kinda wearing a pantsuit that I really don’t want to have to get cleaned. My dry cleaner already hates me for asking her to try and get bloodstains out of a lot of stuff. And yes, most of the blood usually belongs to the unsub, and not me. And I haven't gotten shot in a while. Scratches and bruises yes, and the occasional concussion, but not shot.”

“That’s good, better then what I seem to remember.” G laughed as they walked into the boathouse- using the normal entrance. “Hey Sam, we are here.” He called to his partner as they walked into the main room. 

“Hey G, how are you doing?” Sam smiled as they walked in, slapping G on the back. “Emily, it’s good to see you!” he reached over and hugged Emily as she stepped past G into the room.

“Still bored out of my mind. Hey you think that I could convince Hetty to let me back early? I was planning on trying next week anyway.” 

“Probably, she knows that she wouldn’t be able to get you to not hang around for this case anyway. As long as you pass your physical and psych exams anyway.” Sam winced. 

“Yeah, my doc might not be happy about that.” G winced back “Though I could probably get Nate to agree without many questions.” 

“Hey Emily, could you do it?” Sam asked. 

“Oh, no. Definitely not. I might have a degree in psychology, and am a profiler and all, but I’m not a psychologist. I chase around criminals all day, and try to get into their heads, I’m not a doctor. Besides, Nate is your day to day psychologist, and a member of your unit. If someone not him clears you, it will look bad on the paperwork. And your Director would definitely have questions, and would call my Director, who would wonder why the fuck I was working with NCIS while officially on leave. I would get in major league trouble, and probably lose my spot on the BAU, and maybe the FBI. So, I’d like to keep this on the down low as much as possible.” She winced- she hated politics, and this case practically reeked of them at this point. If you had as many agencies involved in this as there were, there was always going to be politics. 

“Damn.” G muttered. “Well, at least it’s Nate, and not the psychologist who was here before him. That was a fucking mess.”

“Let me guess. Newbie, never worked as any sort of law enforcement, and had no idea why we risked our lives on a daily basis.” Emily snorted. 

“Ding ding ding!” Sam grinned, pointing at her. “Ok, Nate was kinda like that at the beginning, but he did his research, and actually tried to understand why we would want to do this. And likes to go into the ‘field’ and interview our victims families. Having a psychologist helps a lot.” The air quotes were heavy around the field, and Emily grinned again.

“Wants to carry a gun, despite having never fired one before.” She said.

“Yes, again.” G said. 

“Gets really excited about the possibility of going anywhere other then the office, even if it’s just to the boat shed.”

“Check.” Sam grinned. “He’s probably going to have a lot of questions for you, being a member of the famous BAU and all.”

“He sounds like he’s a very good profiler, and the BAU kinda pretty much invented criminal profiling, so yeah that’s probably true. Besides I work with David Rossi, so I am very used to a lot of questions. People learn that he still works with us, and they are usually too intimidated to talk to him unless they are major fans, so they come to the other members of the team instead.” She laughed. 

“I’m suddenly very happy I work on a team that doesn’t officially exist. That sounds aggravating.”

“It can be, when we are trying to focus on saving someone. But otherwise, we are happy to answer people’s questions. The more cops who learn more about routine profiling, the more problems they can handle on their own. We are more then happy to assist, but there are 30 active serial killers at any point in time, and there aren’t nearly enough people trained to catch them. If we were allowed to have days off unless there were no active serial killers, we would never get days off!”

“That sounds rough. While we specialize in the weird national security compromising cases and there are more of those then you would think there are too.” G winced “If we ever get declassified, the public will throw a fit.”

“Yeah, that would suck.” Emily winced. They walked out of the boathouse and towards the cars, Sam going to his black Dodge Challenger, while G and Emily walked over to his Jaguar. After a long drive through the infamous LA traffic, they arrived at what looked like a condemned building.

“Well, this definitely isn’t the standard issue FBI fishbowl.” Emily muttered, looking at the crumbing Spanish style building.

“That it isn’t.” G agreed, pulling in behind Sam.

Sam got out of his car and leaned on it, grinning at them “Three months and the neighbors still don’t know we are here.”

“Huh. Hiding in plain sight.” G grinned “What was it before we got it?”

“Old water plant administration building. Condemned after the Northridge quake.”

Emily gave another dubious glance at the Condemned signs covering the building. “Condemned?” She and G said, with creepily similar timing.

“Only on the outside.” Sam said, leading them into the building. While the outside looked exactly like the condemned deserted building that it was supposed to be, the inside was a rout of color and action, there were people everywhere, doing everything from moving racks of clothing to going over files, to talking on the phone. Sam slung an arm over each of their shoulders as they walked down the hallway “Viola” he said as they walked into the main room, suddenly bright after the dark of the hallway. 

As they walked in, various people around the room glanced up and waved- a young dark haired main, who Emily guessed was Nate, from the lack of a gun on his hip, Kensi, who gave them a brief wave before continuing her argument in Portuguese, and Hetty, who Sam had broken off to talk to while she and G were still looking around.

“Hetty, I gave you the receipts.” Sam argued 

“If every undercover agent came back from an undercover assignment with expenses unaccounted for, Mr. Hanna, I’d be either out of a job or out of pocket! I don’t intend to be either!” Hetty argued back.

“What are we down to 15, 20 bucks?” Sam asked, and Emily and G watched from behind him, smirking. Someday Sam would learn to not argue with Hetty when it came to money.

“61. And a nickel.” Hetty told him.

“You are a fantastic operations manager, Hetty.” Sam said, pulling out his wallet. “Alright, I got you. 20. 40. 60. 61. Okay?”

“I’ll spot you the nickel.” Hetty told him.

“Thank you. I’m good for it.” Sam said, smiling. 

“Mr. Callen. You aren’t due back for a month, regardless of the circumstances.” Hetty frowned. “Emily, it’s good to see you.” She smiled, and Emily stepped forward and leaned down for a hug.

“Hetty, it’s been way too long.” she said. Their last meeting had been in- well, that was classified.

“That it has. How have you been?”

“Better then when I last saw you.”

“And the BAU agrees with you?” She asked. Emily knew that if the slightest hint of a no was detected, that she would be out of the unit, out of the FBI, into NCIS, and into special ops before she could blink.

“Yes, I love it.” Emily grinned “And my team is amazing.” 

“That’s good. Now, let's get down to business, shall we? Mr. Callen- we need to update your biometrics. New photos for drivers licenses, passports, general backstopping, not to speak of documents, credit cards and so forth, and um… wardrobe. Problems with the neighbors?”she asked, pointing at the rolled sleeping bag that was hanging off G’s shoulders.

“Uh, something like that.”

“Well, don’t even think about unrolling that disgusting thing in here. And Eric will whistle when he’s ready.” Hetty said, and then turned around, and like magic, disappeared. 

“I think she’s mellowed.” G grinned

“I think I’m in love.” Sam grinned back.

“That would be Hetty.” Emily said, feeling her own smile stretching her lips. “There’s no one quite like her, and there never will be.” They walked over to the bit of decorative metal vine walls that separate the bullpen from everywhere else, hovering right outside of it. 

“Who’s that?” G asked nodding towards the man fussing with the coffee machine.

“He’s a new guy, started a few days ago. Green.” Sam said, counting his cash, likely trying to figure out what Hetty had left him with. 

“That’s his name?” G grinned, probably thinking about how much then name matched what he looked like- young and inexperienced. 

“Nope.”Sam said. Emily and G both nodded- they knew the type.

Emily heard footsteps overhead, and glanced up just in time to see Eric appear and whistle. “Heads up, we’re ready.” he yelled after they got his attention. “Hey Callen, hey Emily.”

“Eric.” G nodded.

“Hey Eric.” Emily smiled up at him, and he disappeared from the railing back into his tech dungeon. 

“Well, it’s about time.” Kensi said behind them, having just finished her long argument.

“Kensi. My favorite agent.” G reached over and hugged her.

“Hello. I thought you callously abandoned us to join the CIA.” she said, smirking.

“Ah, once was enough. Still making the weekend drive up to Pendleton?”

“Of course, home away from home.”

“Well, that's what you get for growing up a Marine brat.” G grinned

Kensi caught sight of Emily and swooped in for a hug. “Hey girl, how are you?”

“Good. Amazing team right now, which is awesome.”

“Yeah, I heard you got into the BAU, congrats! Now onto the fun stuff- do you have a boyfriend at the moment?”

“No, I’m taking a break from dating after the last one wanted to know if he could use my handcuffs on me.”

“Oh, eww! Men! I swear, I’ve gotten that before, when I say that I’m FBI or LAPD or something! It’s like, do they not know how many criminals these things go on! I would put these on even if I had dunked them in a gallon of sanitizer beforehand.” Kensi winced, making a disgusted face.

“Ladies.” G interrupted, looking like he had heard more then he wanted to know. “Case?”

“Yeah, yeah.” she said, and started walking towards the stairs.

“Did you get a note from your doctor?” the man that Emily had assumed was Nate walked up.

“You’re my doctor, Nate.” G said, and Emily mentally cheered- she was right. 

“Yeah, I just get to play inside your head though. How’s the rest of you, aches, pains, insomnia?” He asked.

“Yes, all of that. Before I was shot. Oh, and this is Emily Prentiss. FBI, BAU. Old friend of mine.”

“Nice to meet you, I’ve heard a lot about the BAU.” Nate smiled, shaking her hand while they were walking up stairs. Emily was amazed that nobody tripped.

“Hi, I’m Dominic.” The green guy said. 

“Callen.” G said, turning around while still walking and shaking his hand. “Nice to meet you, Dom.”

“Emily.” she smiled, thankful that they were at the top of the stairs now and she didn’t have to try to walk up stairs backwards to shake someone’s hand. "And yes, it’s just Callen for him.”

Hearing his sputters of disbelief she sped up, grinning when she heard Callen say “She’s a profiler. It’s like a more realistic psychic.” She loved profiling people like that- she always found their expressions when she did it to be hilarious.

They got into the briefing room and Emily knew in a split second- Garcia would love it here. You would probably have to tie her up and drag her to get her out. Once they were all in the room, Emily started. “I first met Arkady on an op called Cossack.” She said.

“What’s Cossack?”

“A joint operation in Europe against the Russian Mafia.” G answered, doing something to the screen, and pulling the file up. She guessed that he must have asked Eric to pull it up beforehand. “Officially, it was a three man team. Ethan Stanhope. CIA. Ricky Taylor, DEA, same as me.” 

“And then there was me. I was not officially there, and just hanging around playing the young bored bartender. I was the backup, just in case. The one that nobody knew about, so if anything happened I could get back to the US to tell our agencies what had happened.

“Wait. Stanhope and Taylor are both dead. Murdered. Stanhope in Vegas, Taylor in Chicago. And they were both killed on the same day..” Eric said 

“The fifth of May.” G said grimly, reading over his shoulder “The same day I should have died.”

“I guess Arkady really was trying to warn me.” Emily sighed. 

“A traffic cam captured Stanhope being shot in Las Vegas, and Taylor’s shooting was also a drive by same as... um.” Eric told them, glancing at his tablet.

“Mine.” G nodded, feigning casual behavior, but she could tell that he was fighting off flashbacks by the skin of his teeth. She leaned up against him, hoping to reassure him that it wasn’t real, it wasn’t happening, and that he had survived. 

“Anybody charged for either murder?” Sam asked, with a careful glance at his partner. 

“No.” Eric sighed.

“When did you last see these guys?” Sam asked

“When we were debriefed in Berlin, and Emily wasn’t there so they wouldn’t know of her existence. I haven’t seen them for ten years.”

“Did you ever catch the bad guys?” Kensi asked.

“No. It was a joint operation with Russia. There was a syndicate trying to manipulate the flow of oil from the Black Sea into Russia, and, uh someone let them know we were coming.” Emily told them.

“How come the DEA was involved?” Sam asked.

“Loan out. Taylor and I both spoke fluent Russian.” G explained.

“CIA set it up?” Sam asked, trying to fit the pieces of the different agencies together. Emily got why, it was rare for agencies to work together like that, especially on the classified stuff. 

“Stanhope was their point person. But we only ever saw him in the bar, you know, drinking expensive vodka and eating caviar.” G told them.

“I had just joined the CIA at that point, trained but young enough that nobody knew my face, not even Stanhope. G knew me because we had run into each other on an op before that when our agencies were showing off their inability to talk to each other and both sent agents into the same mess.” Emily explained. “It was one of my first ever ops, and G picked me out fairly easily, then proceeded to give me tips and tricks to avoid getting caught by some other agent, who wouldn’t be as friendly as he was.” She and G shared a fond smile, remembering the assignment such a long time ago.

“Did you ever find who betrayed you?” Kensi asked. 

“No.” Emily and G said.

“What about the Russian contact for the operation?”

“That would be Arkady Kolcheck, an officer in the KGB. And he’s clean, he’s an old friend of mine, and the person who called me and told me that G had been shot, even if he believed that G had died at the time. He still doesn’t know that G is alive. He has a place here in LA, I don’t know exactly where it is, but look for something expensive.”

“As of 2007, an American citizen, living in Studio City.” Eric told them after some fast typing.

“Eric, send me that address.” G asked, walking out the door. “Kensi, I need a profile on Arkady, anything you can get, his friends, his business associates, allies, enemies, I want to know why he didn’t die. Emily followed, but G got waylaid by Hetty before she could catch up. 

While Hetty and Nate dragged G off for various tests they had to do, Emily and Sam went to raid the armory for a gun whose bullets weren’t on file as belonging to an FBI agent. Sure, they would come back as NCIS, but G could take credit for them. She could not appear to have been involved in this case- she was off duty and on vacation. Off duty FBI agents weren’t allowed to run around and shoot people. After firing a few practice shots into targets, she went back into the armory and started cleaning the gun. While it was clean, she had just fired it, and didn’t know how long it had been since the thing was cleaned. After that was finished, she went back into the bullpen, where she found the rest of G’s teammates going over what they could find of the security systems and floor plans of Arkady’s house. 

“Have you found anything new?” Emily asked.

“Other then the fact that his security system is even better then I thought it was, nothing.” Eric told her, pushing his glasses further up his nose. Beside him, Dom didn’t even look up from his computer, immersed in the lines of code. 

“That doesn’t surprise me. Arkady was a spy. He has lots of enemies, all of whom would probably like him dead. And now he’s a rich spy. Of course he’s going to do everything he can to keep from being killed.” Emily said.

“And it’s helped by the massive amount of thugs that are always around him.” Sam added.

“And they look like they are well trained thugs, too. You would have to get really creative to distract them, and you better fit into whatever area you were in, or else they will take you as a threat.” Kensi added. 

“Or something so ridiculously stupid they couldn’t believe that an undercover operator would even try it.” Sam grinned. According to G’s tales of past cases, those were the sort of routines that Sam found the most entertaining, and Emily could see why. After a while, the clueless tourist or the lost moron got a bit, well not boring, but not exciting either. It was always fun to try and come up with new ideas, and even more fun to test them out on random civilians. Minus the actual attacking bit of course. 

“Like, what was the name of that one thing you created, Janice?” Kensi grinned

“That was Jolene, and she works perfectly.” Sam scoffed, looking affronted.

“Then why do you always have bruises afterwards?” G said, creeping up behind him. While Emily saw him coming, she didn’t say anything about it, knowing that the creeping up behind someone was a joke in this office.

“Sometimes you have to make some sacrifices to get in, ok?” Sam complained.

“Then don’t whine when you someday lose a tooth, Mr. Hanna.” Hetty said, appearing beside G. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dom jump and wince. That kid really was green. She hoped that would change fast, cause this unit, like the BAU, was not the place for green agents.

“Hey G.” Emily said as they were getting their stuff ready to leave. When she heard a response mumbled through a folder he had in his mouth as he was shrugging his jacket on, she continued “Are there any good Russian bakeries around here? I mean like it might actually come from Russia level of bakeries.”

“Yeah. A few, but they are a bit out of the way.” G told her after taking the folder out of his mouth.

“I was thinking that showing up with a bribe might be useful. I was that man’s bartender for months, remember. I learned a lot while he was flirting with me for the entertainment of it. It was a nice cover for why he always came to that one bar- a pretty young barmaid who didn’t slap him in the face the moment he started flirting. Then again, there were several men who I think came into that bar to flirt with me.”

“I am so glad I’m not a woman.” Dom said. “That sounds awful.” 

“I’m rather used to it. I’ve done a lot worse things then flirt with fellow agents in bars. And the men, both agents and not, gave me really good tips, which was nice. One of the things that I do, when things really go sideways is come up with the worst possible scenario, then go ok, at least that hasn’t happened. Like, ok, I may be chained up in this moron's dungeon, but at least he hasn’t beaten me. Or, I may have to flirt with this asshole, but at least if I feel that it’s gone too far I can drug him and pretend when he wakes up that he had too much to drink.”

“Is that normal?” Dom asked.

“What, getting chained up? Or fatalistic thinking?”

“Both.”

“As an undercover specialist, you have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. You need to remember that. One little mistake can and will get you killed. That is why you always make sure you know your cover story back and front, and you always, always vary your routes. Not doing those things is what would get you killed. Remember that.” Emily told him sternly, and Dom nodded, looking a little scared “The fatalistic thinking is both for the amusement of it and as a reminder that things can always get worse. Never tell yourself that they can’t, because then they will.” Emily felt a little bad for terrifying the poor man, but he truly was greener then grass, and if he wanted to survive, it was better to be terrified now, then dead later. 

“Got it.” he said, looking a little green. From behind his back, Sam gave her a nod and grin. They had probably been telling him variations on the same thing, but they didn’t believe them because he thought that they were messing with him. Now, he might have a higher chance of survival- as long as he remembered what she told him. 

“Anyway, Russian bakeries?” Emily went back to the previous conversation with a grin. 

“If you think he will be less likely to shoot us, sure.” G smirked

“Shoot you?” Dom sounded shocked.

“Just because he likes me doesn’t mean he isn’t going to be pissed when we randomly show up, especially because he thinks G here is dead. And he has no clue that I’m in LA.” Emily told him, as she and G walked down the hallway. 

“What’s Arkady’s favorite thing at a bakery?” G asked.

“How do you expect me to know that? He just raved about baked things, so I assumed it would work. We don’t have time to dig up all of the blackmail on his enemies that he would want instead.”

“Good point. A variety pack then.” G smirked as he swung into his car. 

“Yep.”

After the brief pit stop, they arrived at what Eric told them was Arkady’s house. “Well that certainly looks expensive and ostentatious.” G snorted.

“It looks more like a museum then a house, and it’s probably even worse on the inside.” 

“How do people live in those things?” G sounded horrified.

“Very very carefully. Especially as a child.” Emily winced. Her mother’s house and most of the Embassies she had lived in as a child were like that. While most people would think that because she had money she would be fine, but that definitely wasn’t true. As a child she had been expected to be on perfect behavior at all times. That certainly wasn’t fun as a child- from a very young age she had sworn to never let her children grow up the way she did, even if her mother tried to force her. 

“That sounds like it sucked.” G said with a noticeable lack of sympathy. Emily got it- anything would be better then the childhood that he had. 

“Yes it did, and my mother is still trying to get me to follow in her footsteps and all I say to that is hell no.” 

“What, work at an embassy, when you’ve probably broken laws in that country before, some of which involved murder. Yeah, that would probably be a bad idea.” G said, staring out the windshield at the house above. 

“We better go up to the gate before his security gets nervous.” Emily said. 

G sighed, and let the car roll up to the microphone of the security gate. He reached out and pushed the button. “Who is it.” A very Russian sounding voice said. 

“Emily Prentiss,” Emily said before G could say anything. “I’m an old friend of your boss and I have some information that he might want to know.” 

“Come up to front door. He vill be right out.” The voice told them after a pause as the gates opened. After going up the long driveway, they got out of the car and leaned on it, waiting for Arkady to appear. 

“Emily, my men said you had something to tell me!” Arkady said jovially before he saw who she was with. “Callen?” 

“Live and in person.” G smirk.

“But you were dead!”

“Only mostly, 5 bullets will do that to you, but I managed to survive.”

“That is very good!” Arkady said, rushing down the steps to hug him, then hugged Emily. “Why don’t you come inside.” he said, ushering them in. Before long, they were inside Arkady’s office, with cups of very good coffee to go with the pastries that they had brought. “So why did you come?”

“How did you know I almost died.” 

“And why you were trying to warn me, how did you know it was going to happen beforehand?” Emily added.

“G?” A voice asked from behind them “Is that you?” It continued in Russian. Before she turned around Prentiss mentally categorized everything she could tell about the voice. Young, female, Russian spoke with an American accent- but the Russian was good enough to be native, so likely a first or second generation American. Someone G knew from an op, maybe? She and G both turned around in an eerily similar movement, and Emily saw a young blonde woman, about ten years younger then G, before she ran at him and threw herself in his arms. G froze, standing perfectly still, shocked. The girl was sobbing into his shoulder, but G stood with his arms frozen at his sides, a confused look on his face. “мой большой брат” she sobbed, and G’s jaw dropped, a look of comprehension appeared on his face, and an arm carefully wrapped around the girl’s waist, as if she was glass.

‘My big brother’ Emily translated with a frown. G didn’t have any siblings. He had no family that they knew of. He had no past beyond age 4ish. How did he know this woman? Emily raised an inquiring eyebrow at Arkady, and he beckoned her closer. “She was one of the people who taught G Russian. A foster sister, one that G was especially close to. She was looking for him and found me. I dug up what I could, and pointed her at him. He didn’t want to go anywhere near her though, kept trying to scare her off, pretending to be Russian mafia. She knew he wasn’t, but wasn’t able to get close to him- he often had people near him, and she didn’t know if they were friends or not. Then I started hearing rumors about the oil, the very trade deal that we had attempted to stop, but couldn’t. I then was almost killed, and I asked her to warn him, but she was too late. She wanted to help find the man who killed him. So I sent her the places my men could not go- places that a young pretty American girl can go, that my obviously foreign thugs can’t without questions. She wanted to avenge him.” Arkady whispered in her ear. “Come, let's go, let them reunite in peace.”

Out on the patio, they sat with their coffee, Arkady’s guards at a discrete distance Arkady spoke up again “Why do you trust me so much?” He asked.

“You saved my life in Romania. You wouldn’t save me if you thought that I could give away your secrets. And you told me more then a few of your secrets in that bar. You trusted me first.”

“And then you saved my life in Paris, just before I retired.” Arkady smiled. “I’ve always loved Paris, a beautiful city.”

“Yes, it is.” Emily smiled. “But the houses, Arkady?” Emily asked, referring to his habit of buying houses in the cities that she lived in, even if he had no interest in ever stepping foot in the city, like DC. He hated DC, there were too many American feds there for him to be comfortable. It was one thing for him to know a few feds, and have them know where he lived, but living in a city with so much law enforcement was a no. 

“I was once upon a time friends with your mother, Emily. And then friends with you. You don’t have nearly the resources that I do. And I wanted to give you a safe place to hide if you ever need it.” He said, trying to convince her.

Emily just frowned at him. It sounded like the truth, but she was sure it wasn’t the whole truth. “And?” she waited.

“Don’t ever tell your mother I told you this.” he sighed, waiting for her nod, then continuing “When I was a young spy, I was working in the Russian embassy, in DC. One of the many reasons I hate that city. I was coming back from a meeting one night, alone, as I wasn’t very high ranking then, and there was no need for me to be with anyone. This was still during the cold war. I was walking along the street of embassies, and I was attacked. For being Russian. Your mother saved me. But we worked for enemy nations, and swore each other to secrecy- the last thing we wanted was for that to come out. I’ve never had a chance to repay her for that debt, and she likely wouldn’t let me if I tried. We ran into each other again, in Russia, when you were just a child and she was working at the American Embassy there. So, when I saw you in a bar a decade later, I knew how I could repay my debt. I kept as close track of you as I could, which truthfully, wasn’t all that close- you were going through identities and assignments so fast. When you joined the FBI, and had a team that had no idea what you used to do, I knew what I could do to help you. So I bought the house. You know the rest.” Arkady sighed and took a long sip of his coffee.

“Wow, Arkady, you never let on.” Emily said, shocked. She knew that the man in front of her was not a good man, who did very bad things very regularly, but this she had no hint of “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Think, girl! When could I? I would not tell you anywhere that we might be overheard, and I know we can’t be overheard here, not even very good lip readers with binoculars could get to us.”

“Ok, you’ve got me there.” she smiled. “Thank you Arkady.” 

“If they save your life someday, that will be more then enough.” Arkady smiled back at her. “And if you don’t need them, the very fact that they are there will be a safety net, just in case you need them. Besides, it’s not like I don’t use them myself, occasionally.”

Just then, G and his apparent sister wandered out. They were no longer touching, but G was still looking at her like she was glass. Emily saw some extreme over protectiveness and some light stalking in the girl’s future. Especially if she did work for Arkady more then just on this one thing. She was looking at him like he was something equally fragile, and in this moment, Emily almost thought he was. She almost wanted to lock the girl into a cell in the hacienda, just to make sure nothing happened to her, because that was likely the only way that G was likely to actually concentrate. 

“Emily, this is Alina Rostoff. Alina, this is one of my closest friends, Emily Prentiss.”

“Nice to meet you.” Emily smiled, reaching her hand forward.

“You too.” Alina smiled and shook it. The two of them took a seat at the table, then Arkady continued with their previous conversation. 

“I heard rumors that someone was targeting us, I tried to contact everyone, warn them, tell them to be careful. But Stanhope and Taylor, they had retired, lost to the dream that you Americans so fervently pursue. You and Emily were the only ones left in the game, G. So I called in a favor, got an address where you might be living. I knew if Alina found you and spoke to you, you would believe her. I had to call Emily myself, of course, because with her team, she could be anywhere in the country, with little to no warning. I had to be vague, because of the unsecured line, but I’d hoped that I had gotten the message across. And she was not attacked, which means our attackers either did not know of her being on the op, or that her being in where was it? Idaho? Saved her life.”

“Ohio, but close.” Emily said. “I think they might have just not known who I was. Remember, I stayed under a week after all of you left, just to not seem as suspicious. And I spread rumors that I had gotten a place in a movie, and didn’t specify where I was going, not even in which country.”

“So, how did you survive?” G asked.

“I was prepared. And since then, they have come two more times. They are beginning to annoy me.” 

“Who are they?” G asked, looked as annoyed as Arkady did. 

Arkady beckoned one of his well armed men over, who brought a laptop. He moved it so nobody could see what the screen said, and put a flash drive in that he pulled out of his pocket, then typed something, presumably a password. “Do you remember what Operation Cossack was about?”

“Of course, the, uh, Russian Mafia was being paid off to allow the flow of Russian oil into Europe.” Emily said. 

“Our job was to try to infiltrate the syndicate and find out who was being paid off. G added.

“In the works in a multi-billion dollar deal opening up the flow of oil out of Russia into Europe. They are trying to legitimize their corruption. The deal is being brokered by an American in the oil business. His name is John Cole.”

“He works for the syndicate?” G asked, trying to place the name. 

“Maybe he is the syndicate.” Arkady scoffed, waving his hands around. Arkady may do some shady things now, but he had been loyal to his country for a long time. He despised the mafia trying to ruin his country, although he would work with just about anyone who paid him enough, as long as they weren't going to do something that he didn’t like. “For whatever reason, someone believed it better for the four, maybe five of us to not be around to see it. Truthfully though, I don’t think they knew of Emily, they would have attacked again if they could. They are persistent bastards, these morons.”

“He had me find out everything I could about Cole, which wasn’t much. He avoids cameras, I haven't been able to track down an actual address, all I could find out was that he has a yacht. I haven’t found where it is yet, but I was going to stake it out once I had found it.” Alina told them.

“This is everything that I know about John Cole.” Arkady said, handing her the flash drive. Emily put it in her purse, then thinking better of it, dropped it down her bra instead. It clinked against the metal of the lipstick taser, and G snorted. 

“Oh shut up G.” Emily scoffed.

“I could come with you.” Alina offered “I know the file, I’m the one who has been doing the searching. I could help you.” Emily could tell, while she wanted to help, she also didn’t want to let G out of her sight, the brother she had thought was dead and him leaving would be like him dying again.

“We would probably have to put a bag over your head, to make sure that you couldn’t tell where we were going.” Emily warned her.

“Ok.” Alina shrugged, and Emily was even more impressed. The girl, in the spy world, was as green as grass, even greener than Dom was, but she was stubborn, and willing to do things to get what she wanted, and Emily could respect that. 

“I’ll have to run it past you know who.” G said, standing up and walking deeper into the gardens, to where they couldn’t hear him, but still far away from the fence that nobody would be able see or hear him from there. One brief conversation later, he walked back, nodding. “We will have to bag you, both going in and leaving, and take the weirdest route known to man, and you have to leave all electronics and personal belongings here, but we can bring you in.” G said, smiling. Emily thought that G didn’t want to leave her behind just as much as she didn’t want to leave him.

“Go. Find out who it is. Make sure they don’t actually succeed in killing us.” Arkady said. “Oh, and Alina? Take the necklace I gave you off.” 

“Really, Arkady? A necklace tracker?” Emily scoffed “At least it’s pretty” she said as she caught a glimpse of the necklace. 

“Of course it is, why would I buy something that isn’t?” Arkady smiled. “Tell me when you figure all of this out, will you?” 

“Of course.” G said, and led the way back into the maze of the house. Once they got inside, Alina took the lead, which was good, because Emily didn’t want to have to wander around, trying doors before they found that stupidly ostentatious staircase.

Once they got outside, it was only the work of a few minutes that got Alina into the backseat of the car, with a scarf tied firmly over her eyes. They took the longest, most circular route back to ops that G could possibly come up with, and considering how well G knew this city, it was rather impressive, and turned a 45 minute drive into over an hour. When they finally got to ops, Sam was sitting outside on the trunk of his car, a laptop perched on his lap, obviously waiting to meet Alina. Emily wondered what G had to promise Hetty to let Alina into ops, rather then just going to the boathouse. It probably was something ridiculous.

Emily got out of the car once it was off, and popped the seat forward, helping Alina forward, then guiding her towards the door. G stepped forward, and took her other arm, with Sam hopping down from his car to get the door from them. Once they were inside, Emily took the scarf off of Alina’s eyes.

‘Welcome to NCIS LA.” Sam said “I’m Sam, I’m G’s usual partner.” 

“I saw you when..” Alina started, then winced. Emily felt bad for the poor girl, to believe someone was dead for so long, just to discover that she was alive the entire time. She must feel like she was just living in a dream, something that was most definitely not real. 

“Yeah, that would have been me.” Sam winced. Emily had a feeling that G was not the only one who was going to be fighting flashbacks today. This had to be hard for the entire team, and Emily knew that even though she was hiding it, she wasn’t in the best of places either. 

“Hello Ms. Rostoff.” Hetty said.

“Alina, then is Hetty Lange, my boss. Hetty, this is my foster sister, Alina Rostoff.” G said. 

Alina eyes widened, though she hid it fairly well for someone who was not a spy. “Hello ma’am.” She said, reaching her hand forward. That was certainly better of a reaction then Emily had seen others give to Hetty, so Emily gave her credit for that. 

“”None of that ma’am stuff, I’m Hetty, and it is nice to meet you.” Hetty said. 

“It’s nice to meet you too, Hetty.” Alina smiled. 

“Now, G said you might know who had his hands in all of this?”

“Yes, and Emily has the flash drive with everything that I’d been able to find.” Alina said. 

“Very good, then let's go up to Eric and look at all of it.” Hetty said, leading the way to the stairs, then branching off to go to her office. Emily dropped to the back of the group, fishing the flash drive out of her bra. She didn’t want to do that upstairs in front of the men, Don and Eric’s eyes would probably pop out of their heads. As it was, she got a weird look from a passing agent. Once up the stairs and in ops, they found the rest of the team, crowded around the table, all looking at various documents on the screen. 

“Hey G, Emily.” Kensi said. Eric’s head popped up, and he started furiously wiping things off the screen. Before it disappeared, Emily saw the security footage of G’s shooting, and was thankful that Eric got it down so fast. The last thing that G, and Alina for that matter, needed to see was that. And Emily didn’t really like seeing it either. She wondered how the team could stand watching the video over and over- that probably another reason Sam had been waiting outside- he didn’t want to see it anymore. 

“Here’s Arkady’s flash drive.” Emily said, tossing it to Eric. He plugged it into his computers, and it only took him a matter of seconds to have the information up. 

“John Cole. Owner of an oil refinery company, and the man brokering the deal to let Russian oil into Europe.” Alina said as a bunch of documents popped up on the screen. 

“John Cole.” Eric muttered as he typed into his computer “This guy has built some serious firewalls around his personal life and business operations. He’s even got his own server.”

“Current location?” 

“Usual tricks are coming up blank.”

“Cole is as close to invisible as anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s not leaving an electronic footprint anywhere.” Eric said, gesturing violently into the air. 

“That gesture looks like surrender, Eric.” Sam said, a hint of a smile lurking at his lips, 

“I, I was stretching my arms.” Eric said, trying to make it seem like he wasn’t surrendering.

“Forget about Cole for a second, okay? Alina, do you have any idea who his associates are?”

“There has been rumors of a man named Max Tyrus. I have no idea who he is or what he looks like, but I’ve heard that he is Cole’s right hand man.”

“Max Tyrus.” Eric muttered, typing some more. “Okay, okay. Luck's changing. Max Tyrus. I got you a cell phone number. GPS is blocked. Pulling up his call log. Last call was made from Cole’s refinery to a burner phone, sorry.”

“No DMV photos?” Emily wondered. “They must have spent a lot of money on really good fake Ids then. And passports. How is it possible to have that much fake documentation and still be a ‘legitimate’ business?”

“That’s a very good point.” G frowned and nodded. 

“Wait, wait wait.” Eric said. “I found something. Documentation on the oil business. Photocopy of a photo id of John Cole. It’s really fuzzy, but with a bit of work … and some editing… a slightly cleaner copy!”

Immediately the entire room swung to stare at the big screen as the picture appeared. “Is it just me, or” Emily started.

“He kinda looks like Stanhope. With a lot of facial reconstructive surgery and 10 years added on.” G finished “Eric, bring up the video of Stanhope getting killed.”

“That’s definitely Stanhope, minus a bit of facial surgery. Look at that, he looks directly at the camera. Like he wants them to see him.” Emily pointed out.

“Look at how he collapses so that his legs are the only thing visible. It would make it easier to switch a body out.”

“Eric, can you pull up the morgue’s picture of Stanhope?” Kensi asked. 

“Yeah, give me a minute.” He said, and a few seconds of furious typing later a picture popped up. 

“That is definitely not Stanhope.” Dom said.

“So John Cole is Stanhope. He must be who was trading the information that ruined our op!” Callen said.

“Either that or he is Max Tryus.” Sam pointed out. “Either way, we have a problem on our hands.”

“So we infiltrate. And hope that we manage to get a drop on them.” Callen said. 

“I can’t. As much as I would like to, and want to help, I can’t risk having to actually do anything, and get in trouble because of it. It’s one thing for me to visit CI’s, and ask them questions, it’s another thing to help raid an oil refinery. This case is likely to get a lot of attention from the higher ups, and the last thing we need is to try to cover up my involvement. The CI stuff is nothing, TPTB won’t care about that, but actually being on the ground and shooting a gun, they will.” Emily pointed out, running a hand through her hair. 

“As much as I wish that we could have you with us, I agree. It would be too hard for you to do anything and be able to make it seem like you weren’t there.” Callen said reluctantly. 

“You can stay here and sit on coms, and do the whole psychologically analyse thing with Nate.” Eric offered. “Anything that you say can just be attributed to Nate.”

“Do your coms record, as proof for stuff later?” Emily asked.

“Yes.” 

“Then Nate can do all of the talking and if I need to say something, I’ll just tell him, and he can repeat it.” Emily said. 

“Ok, that works.” G said, smiling. “I wish that we had more back up though.”

“Do you guys seriously not ever use the LAPD swat team, or the other agents in this building? It seems weird to go in with only three agents, especially with something as big as an oil refinery, and as many employees, who knows if they are in on the mafia connection or not?” 

“We take our agents when they aren’t doing something else, and pull back up from the San Diego field office if necessary, but otherwise no.” Sam said.

“What’s available today?” Emily asked. 

“I don’t know, let me go ask around.” Sam said, and walked out, jogging down the stairs.

“You guys really need an LAPD liaison.” Emily said.

“What? Why?” Kensi asked. 

“Well, a LAPD liaison could help with finding cases that go under NCIS jurisdiction, and making sure those cases go to you instead of the LAPD. They could also arrange for the LAPD SWAT team to help out, and generally coordinate things. Like, my team has JJ, our Media Liaison. She specializes in dealing with the media, and since the media likes nothing more then it like serial killers, there is usually a lot of media attention on our cases. However, she is also a fully qualified agent, who kicks down doors with the rest of the team if necessary. What I think that you guys could use is an LAPD liaison, someone who is an undercover specialist. It doesn’t make sense for the LAPD to send someone who isn’t at least trained in undercover, as this unit goes undercover more then any other team I’ve ever met.” Emily explained.

“Which is why I have been arguing with Director Vance that we should have one ever since I took command of this office.” Hetty said, appearing behind them, with Sam in tow. “This team always should have been bigger then it was, undercover ops often need more then just 3 or 4 people, and a LAPD liaison would fill that slot quite nicely and I would get to stop getting in as many arguments with the LAPD over little things that shouldn’t even be arguments in the first place.” 

“We do fine as is.” Kensi pointed out defensively.

“My team is 7 people. One of which is our tech, and having three pairs to go do things, more if we split up when going to safe places like the morgue and the police station, means we can get work done a lot faster then if there were less of us.” Emily pointed out. “More work means we catch out killers faster, which means we save more lives. And before Boston, it used to be 9 people, but three of the BAU's agents were killed, and only one was replaced. Elle Greenaway took that slot, then I took her's when she transferred a year later. And we are still fighting to get more agents on the team, TPTB just haven't approved it.” 

“I’m not going to just stick some random officer onto this team, Ms Blye. When I get approval, they will be selected very carefully, so that they fit into this unit.” Hetty told her. “And now, you have an op to run. And do try to take Mr. Stanhope alive? I think the CIA might have a lot of questions for him once they have discovered what he has done.”

“What are we going in as?” Sam asked. 

“Well, I have this very nice warrant here for Mr. Stanhope and anything he might be involved in, so I hope it will be as armed federal agents?” Hetty said, raising an eyebrow. “And we have both LAPD SWAT and our agents ready when you need them.

“Hey, Eric, can you pull up a satellite feed of the refinery?”

“Yeah sure.” Eric said, and it popped up on the big screen. 

“Ok, that big gate at the front will be a problem. We will have to get it open and fast, before the guard radios it into the office.” Callen said.

“Point a gun at his face, and tell him to put it down before we start shooting.” Sam said “Usually works for me” SAm said. 

“Is there a back exit?” Emily asked.

“Yeah, two back exits, plus the main one.” Eric said, moving over to the screen and pointing them out. 

“Then we need to split into 4 teams. One to come in through the front gate, two to cover the back gates, and the last team to come in one of the back entrances and sweep the back while we cover the front.” G said, looking over the screen.

“LAPD SWAT can take the back two exits and get anyone running. How many agents do we have?”

“Ten, plus you.” Hetty told them.

“You are going to have a problem keeping people from escaping out that gate.” Kensi pointed out. 

“True.” G frowned. “Is Renko one of the ten agents?” 

“Yes, he is.” Hetty said. “Why?”

“Have Renko go in with Kensi, Sam, and I. 8 agents split into two teams of 4, and come in from both the back gates. That will limit the odds of someone getting past them and then hiding until it’s safe to get out.”

“And the one agent left?” Sam asked.

“Dom, have you ever been in a firefight before?” Callen asked. 

Dom froze and his eyes bulged out “No, I haven’t.” Emily could almost see him shaking, and felt bad for him. 

“Well, hopefully you won’t have to. I want you and the one agent to follow behind us in a big SUV, and after the team and I go in, I want you to move the SUV so it blocks the exit, then shut the gate completely. That way if someone tries to escape, they’ll open the gate, then see you, and be stuck.” Callen explained. 

“I think I can handle that.” Dom said, nodding slowly, though Emily could tell that he was still nervous. 

“With luck, you won’t see any action at all.” Sam said reassuringly. 

“Would you also want me and the other agent to take the gate guard into custody, just in case they are a part of this?” Dom asked. 

“I’d forgotten about him. Yes, that would be great.” G said. “Is there anything else anyone can think about that we missed?”

The entire group stared at the screen for a long minute, running through the plan in their heads. “I don’t think I see anything.” Kensi said, shifting up from where she had been leaning against the table and stretching. Emily winced as her back made several loud cracks. 

“Ok, Eric, where is the nearest discrete meeting spot where we could meet up with everyone and still be fairly close to the refinery?” G asked, straightening up. Emily could tell that he was mentally preparing for what was about to come- arresting one of his former teammates. Even if he was dirty and selling them out, it still wasn’t an easy thing for him to do.

“There is an abandoned parking lot a few blocks away, you won’t be able to be seen by people in the refinery, and you can get to any of the exits from there.” Eric said.

“Okay, send everyone the address. We’ll meet up there and go over the plan. Also, Eric, can you send everyone a copy of that map? We’ll bring some hard copies to look over, but when we get there, we might want a digital copy when searching for hideaways.” Sam said, and they all filed out of the room. 

“And now we wait.” sighed Eric.

“And now we wait.” Emily repeated back. 

It was more then an hour before all of the teams were in position and ready. In that time, Emily, Eric, Nate and Hetty all sat in the Ops center, watching the satellite view of the refinery, as people did their jobs without any idea of what was going to happen. Eric had tried to hack security cameras inside the refinery, but Stanhope was an ex-spy after all, and knew all of the tricks to keep people from spying on him. So all they had was the slightly fuzzy satellite and the body cams everyone was wearing over their vests. 

The plan, inevitably, did not go as planned. The first thing that went wrong was when the guard refused to open the gates, which forced Sam to leap out of the car and break open the door of the guardhouse, to keep him away from the intercom. He then had to waste precious seconds figuring out how to open it himself. One he got it opened, he had to jump back into the car to drive it in, which slowed Dom down, as he and the other agent had to take down the combative gate guard before they could close the gates again. While Dom took a few hard punches, from what Emily could see of the other agents camera, he seemed ok. 

Meanwhile, G and the team were having problems. There were more then a few Russian thugs hanging around, presumably Russian mafia who were there about the deal that Cole/Stanhope was working on. Of course, being Russian mafia, they weren’t exactly happy about any feds showing up. So the team was greeted with a hail of bullets. Emily winced as the windows Kensi’s little silver midsize SUV blew out just as the team got out of the way. They had to take careful shots at the thugs, to make sure that they weren’t shooting Stanhope or Tyrus. 

“I have eyes on Stanhope.” Sam yelled over the coms. I can’t guarantee a non-lethal shot at this distance. Dom, he’s headed for you!”

“Got it.” Dom said grimly. Beside her, Hetty winced. Ex-CIA spook, deadly enough to survive long enough to retire, vs. her little probie. Yeah, this was not looking good. Emily started chewing on her fingernails. 

“Eyes on Tyrus.” Renko shouted. “He’s wearing a vest.” He said, then a gun fired, and from the way that his arms jerked on the camera, it was Renko. “Tyrus has a shot to the vest, but I’m not going to say whether he’s down or not.” 

“Got it.” Callen said, tensely.

Meanwhile, both the LAPD SWAT team and the two other NCIS teams were having their fair share of problems- SWAT with the thugs trying to get out their gates, and NCIS having to try to decide if the people running around were innocent employees or thugs. The NCIS teams seemed to have decided to zip tie everyone, employee or not to the nearest convenient pole, and they would sort them out later. The LAPD was just yelling and brandishing guns, and most of the morons took one glance at the angry men to surrender, dropping to their knees and letting themselves be cuffed. 

Emily took that all in quickly, then zeroed in on Dom’s camera. He was standing behind the standard government issued black SUV, with his gun resting on the hood, most of his body except his head concealed. His partner was using the trunk for cover, and through his camera, Emily could see the guard neatly trussed up in the gatehouse. They must have decided to leave him there so he wouldn’t be a problem if they got into a car chase. 

Emily stared at the gate on the camera, waiting for it to twitch, and suddenly it did. She could see Stanhope, running through, squeezing himself through the small gap the second it appeared. He froze for a split second, seeing the car. “NCIS FREEZE.” Dom yelled. In the other agent’s camera she could see him holster his gun. What in the hell was he doing Emily wondered. She didn’t want to distract Dom though, so she stayed silent. She could see Stanhope focusing on Dom, so he wasn’t expecting the other agent to rush in and tackle him before he could do anything. Stanhope was on the ground and in zip ties before he could do anything. Emily blew out a very relieved breath, and could hear everyone else in ops doing the same thing.

And just like that, it was all over, in less then 5 terror filled minutes. G and the team were cuffing their thugs, the NCIS teams were going through a much more detailed search, but everyone was just giving up, and the LAPD SWAT were putting their prisoners in a row along the fence with one officer guarding them and another guarding his back, just in case someone popped his head out. Dom and the other agent were shoving Stanhope into the back of their SUV, trussed up with both zip ties and duct tape. Between the two, he should be able to get away, especially with two armed agents watching him. Sam was hauling Tyrus to join the thugs, so Renko was right that he was alive, and just injured enough to stay down. 

Still Emily was tense waiting for something else to happen. “All clear.” G reported. Emily sighed and dropped her com onto the table. It was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter ended up being a monster, at 15k and still going. Because of that I split it in two, and the adventures of Emily in LA will continue in the next one! As it is, this chapter is almost 11k! I have only got to season four of NCIS LA, so if I've portrayed anyone wrong, please tell me! I hope you liked it and please review!
> 
> Warning of the day: my Russian is all google translate, so blame google if it is wrong!


	3. The Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, I know this is really late, but finals almost killed me this year! I should have the next chapter up in a few days!

Chapter 3

It was a few hours before the team managed to get back to the office and Emily could see for herself that they were all ok. “How do you deal with this?” She asked Eric. It was one thing when she was throwing herself into danger, but watching others do it on a screen, when she could barely do anything to help them was so aggravating.

“You get used to it, I guess. I mean, it’s probably easier for me, because I know that I would be no help if I were out there, but sometimes it’s hard to watch them risking their lives when I know that I’m safe in here.”

“It is hard, and it never gets any easier.” Hetty sighed. “I just sit here and hope they come back uninjured.” 

“I hope so too.” Emily sighed as she watched the little figures moving around on the satellite- the clean up crew, cops and a few EMTs dealing with the mess that the team left behind. They were on their way back, Emily reminded herself. They were fine. Nobody had gotten hurt. Still, she couldn’t help but chew on her nails until they got back fine- dirty, and a little scratched from all of the broken glass and dodging bullets, but fine. Broken glass because the Law of Lots of Bad Guys and bullets means that if any bullets go flying, it means that a window will inevitably break. The Law of Lots of Bad Guys was a law that she and G had created during a long stakeout when they were sitting in a very cold car and trying to keep busy. Emily had never hated a stake out as much as she hated them during that one- no matter how many jackets on, she still felt freezing, and they couldn’t turn on the car because the idling engine would give them away. When it was all over, she practically cuddled a space heater until she melted. It was also the last op she worked with G before she joined the FBI.

It was just then the door creaked open, and she heard the team's voices. She rushed down from where she had been waiting on the balcony just outside of ops, and towards the team. “Hey Emily.” G called grinning at her. “Did you know that Sam here was afraid of large snakes?” From the way that Sam winced beside him, this had been an ongoing conversation. 

“G, anyone sane is afraid of large snakes.” Emily laughed.

“Psychologically, the fear of snakes shows-” Nate started to say, his lips twitching at an attempt to repress a grin.

“Would you all just shut up? It hissed at me and I almost stepped on it. Yes I squeaked. You would too! Now forget about it!”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t” Renko grinned, pushing a strand of hair out of his eyes.

“Definitely won’t forget that.” Kensi added, and the two of them veered off towards the armory, snickering. Sam followed them, grumbling as Nate continued his interrupted discussion. 

“Are you ok, Em? You look a little pale.” Callen said, frowning. 

“Yeah, I just discovered I really don’t like watching people shooting things on camera, without being in a firefight myself. I wanted to be there with you. And I’m running on stupidly little amounts of sleep the last 4 days.” Emily winced, rubbing at the headache that was forming thanks to said lack of sleep. 

“Go crash on the couch, that's what it’s there for. And even better, because you aren’t supposed to be here, you have no paperwork to do! I’ll wake you up when mine is all done.” G smiled, and pushed her towards the couch that was almost hiding behind the long table. 

“And how often do you sleep on this couch?” Emily laughed, falling face first onto the couch. “Now go way. I’m sleeping.” She heard G laugh, then nothing else- thanks to insomnia, it was very easy to fall asleep.

She woke up a while later to notice that someone had pulled a blanket over her, she was surprised that she didn’t feel it- but that just showed how tired she was, she guessed. She blinked hard, then glanced up to see Callen, haloed in the light of his lamp, the office otherwise empty. “Hey.” she mumbled, her voice rough from the sleep “What time is it?” 

“Almost 8, you got almost 4 hours of sleep. Feeling better?” he asked. 

“Yeah.” she yawned 

“Good, cause Hetty is expecting us for dinner when you get up.” G grinned, throwing his pen down, glaring at the stack of papers in front of him. Judging by the two separate mountains of papers, he had been there for a while, and still had a lot of work to do. 

Emily yawned again and sat up, shrugging the blanket off her shoulders. “You could have woken me up.” she protested, stretching. 

“Nah, you needed the sleep. And Hetty threatened to break into wherever I was sleeping and wake me up at all hours of the night if I even thought about waking you up.” G smirked “And I’m pretty sure that she would do it too.”

“It’s Hetty, of course she would.” Emily pointed out. 

G stood up and started gathering all of the things that were spread out around the table and shoving them into his bag. “Yeah, only Hetty.” he laughed, shaking his head “I’m going to miss working with Macy, but it will be a lot of fun working with Hetty everyday.”

“Macy?” Emily asked, trying to place the name. 

“The Operations Manager before Hetty. She got reassigned shortly after I was shot, and Hetty took charge.” Callen explained. 

“Oh. Where did she get reassigned to?”

“East bumfuck nowhere.” Callen snorted.

“One of those positions. Ouch.” Emily winced, gathering all of her stuff into her bag, and wincing at the sight of the undone paperwork inside- Hotch was going to be mad if she didn’t have that done by the time she got back, especially considering the mountain that was probably still growing on her desk. “You ready?” she asked once she was done making sure that none of her belongings were scattered around the room. 

“Ready.” G confirmed and they walked out into the warm California night- good food and friends were waiting for them. 

The next morning, Emily was refreshed after a night of laughing with people she hadn’t seen in a while and more then enough sleep in one of Hetty’s guest rooms. Because of that she was in a good enough mood that she decided to try and tackle the stack of paperwork that she had in her backpack. She was surrounded at the long table by G’s teammates who were all very unhappy about their own mountains of paperwork, and envious of how much G had managed to get done the night before when he was waiting for her to wake up. They looked like they would do anything for a distraction, even a rampaging serial killer and their long lost cannibalistic family running straight through ops would be welcomed at this point. Emily frowned- an idea hit her, and she didn’t know if G would like or hate what she was about to say. 

“Hey Callen?” Emily asked looking over. He glanced up from his mountain of paperwork and mumbled. Taking that as an assent, she continued “Did you ever try and see if you had any siblings?”

With that sentence, she suddenly had his full and complete attention “No, I never really considered that I might have any. And trying to dig anything out the foster system was hard as hell when I was searching for anything about myself, with this time gap, I’m not sure that you’d be able to find anything, given how much time has passed.”

“That’s why I have a computer goddess on speed dial!” Emily grinned. “Do you want me to call her now”

“Yes.” G choked out, looking like all of his hopes and dreams had been handed to him in one second, and he wasn’t sure if he was going to drop it or not. Emily noticed that she had the entire team’s complete attention, and even Hetty was watching from her office. 

She pulled out her phone and hit Garcia’s number. It was only a few rings before she could hear the bubbly tech on the other end “Hey Garcia, I was wondering if you were busy?” Emily said, putting her feet up on the long table that the entire team was working on. Sam glared at her, but G and Kensi grinned, so she didn’t bother moving. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Hetty wincing, but she didn’t say anything. Nate on the other hand, was sitting on the couch reading what looked suspiciously like a comic book and didn’t even seem to notice. 

“Absolutely nothing happening here- Reid and Morgan are out on prison interviews, the rest of the team is working on the paperwork mountain, and Cooper's team is on stand down until their newest member gets here in a few days. I was just doing paperwork, and you know how much I’d like to avoid that.”

“This is all out of curiosity's sake, I’m not expecting you to find anything, so you don’t need to agree-”

Garcia interrupted her “What do you need?”

“Could you do a search for everyone with the last name Callen, and I don’t care how long that list is, I’ll add more parameters later. That’s C-A-L-L-E-N” she said.

“Well, I’m getting a lot of people with the first name, the last name is a little less common, so once we take those out, there’s not a very large number, only a few thousand, and have I mentioned that I hate the names Smith and Jones? I mean, I know a few amazing people with those last names, but do they have to make my job hard?” Garcia complained, and Emily grinned. She had heard Garcia complaining about common last names more times then she could think about. It was a subject brought up every single time they came across an unsub with a common last name. Which was, unfortunately for Garica, fairly often. 

“Ok, I want you to limit that to only people who were in the foster care system at some point in their lives.” 

“Ok, now I have 13 names. Do you have any more limiters, or do you want me to send these to you?”

“Can you limit it to people who don’t have birth certificates on record, like they just appeared out of nowhere?” Emily asked, crossing her fingers. 

“That brings it down to two people. A G Callen and an Amy Callen, both residents of the lovely Los Angeles.”

“Can you send me everything that you have on Amy Callen, current address, current or former marriages, foster homes, anything you can get.”

“And Mr. G Callen?” Garcia asked

“He’s sitting right next to me, Pen, I don’t need anything on him.” Emily smiled, glancing over at him. The look on his face was one of the happiest that Emily had ever seen him. He looked faintly nervous, but ridiculously happy at the same time. 

“Got it! On its way to your email faster then the speed of light.”

“Awesome, thanks Garcia!”

“Always! Garcia over and out!” Pen chirped, hanging up. 

Emily pulled her laptop out, for this she wanted a screen that was bigger then her phone, and opened it. After getting through the multiple passwords that were required for a laptop that belonged to the FBI, she finally got her email open, and saw Pen’s name right at the top. Before she could click on it, though, Hetty interrupted from behind them. “Why don’t we take this up to OPs, where Eric can work off of what Ms. Garcia has found?” she suggested, and the entire team immediately rushed up the stairs, Callen grabbing the laptop and holding it like a drowning man holds a rescue rope. After they explained everything that had happened so far to Eric, it only took him a matter of seconds to hook Emily’s laptop up to his screens. She put in her list of passwords again, so the laptop would accept the connection, then Eric started going through the information that Garcia had sent. 

“Ok.” Eric said. “Amy Taylor, age 42, divorced. No children, no current address listed, and still using her married name. That’s unusual. Was in foster care for a while- a string of orphanages, then several foster homes.” He said as a driver’s license popped up on the screen along with a marriage certificate. After a bit of typing from Eric, a second driver’s license, this one labelled Steven Taylor popped up. Emily glanced over to look at G to see him staring at the screen, at the woman’s face. 

“If her address can’t be found, can you find the ex husband's?” Emily asked.

Eric typed for a few seconds more, then an address popped up on the screen “Done.”

“Ok. Sam, Emily, Callen. Go and find out what you can. The rest of you have paperwork to do.” Hetty told them, and while Kensi and Dom grumbled, they went back to their paperwork anyway. The team all went back down the stairs, and split up at the bottom of the stairs. 

The three of them got into Callen’s car, despite Sam’s protests- it had a back seat and it was blocking Sam’s car in, which was how Emily and G won that argument. The directions that Eric had sent them lead them to an apartment, which was from what Emily could tell, decently large (for LA, that is). They gathered around the door, with G in front. He took a long breath in then released it slowly. Emily could tell that he was trying to psych himself up to knocking on that door. She placed her hand on his arm for a second- a silent we are here for you, you aren’t alone in this. He knocked. 

A man with dirty blonde hair and blue eyes opened the door “Yes?” He said, eyeing the crowd of people around the front door. 

“Steven Taylor?” Emily asked. The man nodded, looking confused “My name is Emily Prentiss, I’m with the FBI. We were looking for Amy Taylor?” She flipped her badge up, and with a movement she had secretly practiced for hours after she got her first federal agent’s badge, flicked it open. Taylor squinted at it for a moment, reading. 

“What, is Amy in some kind of trouble?” The man asked, startled. 

“Not at all, sir, we just want to ask her some questions about something she might have witnessed.” Sam smiled. 

“Oh, well we got divorced, she doesn’t live here anymore.” Taylor said, running a nervous hand through his hair. 

“She doesn’t currently have an address listed, we are just trying to find her.” Callen said reassuringly. Well, Emily could tell that it was supposed to be reassuring. She knew that Taylor was probably falling for it, but she, and Sam she could see, glancing at him, could tell that Callen was nervous as hell. 

"Yeah, she got a house after we got divorced, a little ways out of LA. She always wanted a big place, with a big backyard, and neighbors that didn't complain when we laughed too loud. But I wanted to stay here, where I had a less then an hour long commute, which I would have had if we had gotten that place together. Just another thing that I refused to compromise on." Taylor sighed. "That's what destroyed us. She wanted things, and I didn't. She wanted kids and I didn't. She wanted me to actually try to have some kind of relationship with my siblings, since she grew up in foster care and everything, and I thought that was way too much effort." He sighed, then looked startled. "Sorry that I rambled on like that." he looked embarrassed. Not a man who just starts rambling about things often, Emily thought, hiding her amusement. Especially not to random 'FBI' agents who just show up at his door.

"It's ok." Callen said "Could you possibly give us that address?"

"Yeah, sure. Give me just one second." He said, and disappeared away from the door, leaving it ajar. Emily, Sam, and Callen waited only for a few minutes before he returned, brandishing a little slip of paper. "Here it is."

"Thank you." Emily smiled as G took the paper. She was trying to divert his attention away from G, who looked like he had been handed the Holy Grail.

"Of course, and uh, she's usually home right about now. She works from home today, so she can answer your questions." Taylor said.

"Thank you for answering our questions, you've been a lot of help." Sam smiled, and then turned away from the door. Taylor nodded, and closed the door behind them.

"Well that was weird." Sam said.

"Never underestimate the power of what a badge can do. I've seen people react weirder." Emily snorted. "There was this one guy who started freaking out because he was afraid we would find the oregano in his kitchen cupboard and think that it was meth."She snorted.

"No way." Sam laughed.

“We thought that was odd, but we interviewed him anyway, and things weren’t adding up. So we brought him into the station and interviewed him. And then we searched his house.” Emily continued, hiding a grin. 

G knew her too well though, and even if he was distracted, he still noticed the hints of a smile on her face. “Was there weed in his Oregano?”

“No. It was hidden under his bed. Along with a few other drugs.” She snorted. “He wasn’t our killer, just a drug dealer who was really really good at hiding it.” G and Sam started laughing as they got into the car- Sam was driving, as they didn’t think it would be a good idea if G drove right now. Emily was once again consigned to the back seat. 

The drive out to the house was long. G was fidgeting in the passenger seat, like he could make the car move faster by twitching. Despite his partner’s anxiousness, Sam stuck to the speed limit, which Emily knew was a rarity for him. Callen only got more anxious when they pulled up in front of the house. 

The brunette woman looked very apprehensive when Callen and Emily showed up on her doorstep, with Sam waiting in the car. They didn’t want to crowd the poor woman, but Emily could tell that he needed someone there with him. She could also tell that G almost felt like she was a safety blanket right now, how she had shown up and solved all of his problems with a snap of her fingers. “Hello,” Emily smiled, for once trying to not appear like an FBI agent. “My name is Emily Prentiss and this is my friend G Callen. Are you Amy Taylor?”

“Um, yes. Would you like to come in?” The woman said, her nervousness only getting worse. Emily's internal warning bells started dinging, but she forced herself to keep a straight face. Amy Callen led them into the house, and they settled in the living room, with Amy in a chair and Emily and Callen facing her on the couch. “I saw your badges as you sat down, are you cops or something?” She asked, and Emily's warning bells went louder. 

“I’m FBI and he is NCIS, that is Naval Criminal Investigative Service, they are like the FBI of the navy.” Emily smiled. 

“And you are here because you-“ Amy started but Callen cut her off 

“Think that I’m your brother.” Callen leaned forward, like he could learn more faster that way. 

The women twitched, and Emily only got more apprehensive, but she could tell that Callen didn’t notice, he was too focused on the only link to his past that he had ever found. “I’m not Amy Callen.” She blurted out, and G froze. “Amy was my best friend, we were in the orphanage together.”

“Who are you?” G choked out looking crushed. Emily leaned into his side, and wrapped her arm around him. He just leaned into her. With her other hand, she texted Sam, telling him to come inside. G needed him for this conversation. 

“Hannah Lawson. You have to understand, the men that killed my father, they scared me. Amy and I used to sneak out at night, go down by the river. Just, just one time she slipped. I tried to save her but it just swept her away. So I hid in her bed and they thought Hannah Lawson had gone missing. Both blondes, both the same age, they didn’t really know us, and didn’t really care. It was easy to pretend. About a month later they found her body. She was buried under my name, and I lived with hers.” Amy, now Hannah sobbed. Sam, who had come in just in time to hear the last half of her recitation, gave a shocked look at Emily from where he was hovering at the edge of the living room. “There was nothing I wanted more then a new name, and not having those men be able to find me, and Amy gave me that. Her last gift to me.”

“Do you have any idea who they might have been?” G asked gently. Emily could see his protective instinct rising up, even if this wasn’t his actual sister, she was the closest to her as he was going to get, so G was going to protect her with everything he had. 

“I recognized him.” she whispered, looking terrified. Emily didn’t blame her, this was obviously a terrifying memory, and one she obviously tried not to think about often. “He was someone who worked with my father while we were in Iran. Akabar, I think. Or Akbari. I don’t know, it’s been so many years.”

“Karim Akbari?” G asked, startled. 

“That sounds about right, why? And how do you know him?” Hannah said.

“Karim Akbari was a senior member of Savak, Iran’s secret police, I think there was a lot of money that was missing involved too. I got briefed on him when I was a member of the Agency, but it’s been a few years. Very very very dangerous man.” G said grimly and Hannah flinched. 

Emily pulled out her cell phone. “Hey, Eric can you run a name for me? Karim Akbari.” she said. After a few minutes of typing and some swear words, Eric gave her the answer she didn’t want to hear. “Eric got into the file, but only for a few seconds, before the agency kicked him out.” She told them after Eric hung up. 

“Eric. Got kicked out.” Sam repeated, dumbfounded. Emily could understand why, from what she had seen, Eric was an amazing hacker, just as good as Pen was. 

“Yep.” Emily said. 

“Wow.” Sam said, and Emily grinned. “He’s gotta be so pissed. Eric is our technical analyst, he’s very good at what he does, so being locked out of something is very aggravating for him.” he explained to the confused woman. 

“So Akbari is just as terrifying as I remembered him as?” Hannah asked, going very pale. “Do you think I’m in danger? Should I change my name again and hide from him?” Emily was about to give her a diplomatic answer that boiled down to ‘Yes, very, and run as far as you can away.’ but the ringing of her cell phone prevented her. 

“Prentiss” she answered. 

“Bad news, Emily.” Eric told her. 

“Oh God, what now.”

“So when I got into the file, before they locked me out, I managed to get a picture of Akbari. Just cause, having a pic to run through our files is always a good thing, right? So I just put it in, and he entered the country three days ago. In New York. Then he got on a plane, to Houston, changed Id’s, but you can’t get past the almighty camera! From Houston, he came to LA. I haven’t been able to find him leaving, so I’m assuming he’s still in LA. I’m combing through airport camera’s right now to see if I can find if he gets into a car when he leaves, so I can use Kaleidoscope to find him.” Eric said in his usual rushed fashion.

“Shit.” Emily said. “That’s no good. Why did he say he was in the country?” 

“To find some quote long lost family. Yeah right.” Eric scoffed.

“Right, can you have Hetty do her thing and see if she can get us into that file? I’ll deal with things on this end.” Emily said.

“Got it. And good luck.” Eric said then Emily heard the dial tone. 

Emily closed her eyes and rubbed her face, suppressing the urge to swear- out loud at least. Internally, she was running through every swear word she had ever learned, in every language she knew them in. It was a very long list. 

“Emily, what?” Callen asked sharply. 

“Akbari’s in LA.” she groaned, her voice muffled by her hand which were still covering her face. She straightened up- as much as she wanted to keep swearing, they needed to act now. “Hannah, I need you to grab a day or two’s worth of clothing, and shove it into a bag. And whatever you think you might need or want. We are going to take you somewhere safe.” She said. 

Hannah went even more white, but stood up and nodded anyway. Emily’s estimation of her only went up- she was brave, anyone who could be told their childhood monster was not only real, but worse then they thought and coming for them and could still do things, not sitting in a catatonic puddle, was someone Emily definitely admired. Right as she was about to walk down the hallway she turned and said “What about Steven?” 

“We’ll send some agents to go and get him too.” Sam reassured her. She just nodded and continued down the hallway. “I’ll tell Eric to send Kensi and Dom. And maybe a few other agents, just in case.” 

“I can’t believe this.” Callen muttered. “This morning was so normal. Then I had a sister, then I didn’t have a sister, then one of the most dangerous men in the world is out to get my not-sister, then he is in LA as I meet her for the first time. It’s unbelievable. But I have to believe it, cause it’s real.” He rubbed his face with his hands, then let out a long breath. 

“Sorry, G.” Emily mummered. She wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t asked G that question. Would he ever have found Hannah? Or would she have died before he could even get to her?

“No, I’d rather know then not know and always wonder.” he sighed. “It just all happened so fast. I’m just a little off kilter I guess.”

“It’s ok to be off kilter, G” Sam said reassuringly. “That’s normal, and to be honest, I’d be worried if you weren’t, after the last few days we’ve had.” Sam looked worried about his partner, and Emily was too. G was more then just off kilter, and it would take a few days, if not longer, for it to all sink in. G would keep pretending that all was ok until it was over though. 

Just then, Hannah walked back in, with a duffel bag over her shoulder and purse in her hand. “Ok, I think I have everything.” she said. 

“Clothes, shoes, toiletries, things to keep you entertained?” Emily rattled off, impressed that she packed that fast.

“Yep. Clothes, shoes and toiletries are already packed from a hiking trip I planned to take with some friends this weekend. All I had to do was switch out the hiking boots for some tennis shoes. And I have my Kindle, so I’m all set.” she said

"Good." Emily smiled. "And our coworkers are picking up Steven, and he will be going to the same safe house that we are going to. But you don't have to see him if you don't want to- he can take the upstairs while you take the downstairs."

"We will be fine together. Besides, he will have a lot of questions, and it's the least I can do to answer them." she grimaced slightly.

"Did he know anything about all of this?" Callen asked.

"No, he thought I was Amy Taylor. And to be honest, I've used the name for so long that it feels weird to think of myself as Hannah, as if she was a completely different person." Hannah explained.

"Which do you want us to use?" Sam asked as they walked out towards the car. Once again, Sam got into the driver seat, but this time, Emily took the passenger seat while Callen sat in the back with Hannah.

"Hannah, please. I need to get used to it anyway. It will be weird trying to explain this to all of my friends who have known me for so long, that I was lying to them. And Steven. That is going to suck.” she sighed, looking depressed, then perked up “Hey, do you think you could have someone sort out the legal documents and everything? I wouldn't even know where to start."

"We know some people who can sort that out for you if we ask." Callen smiled. Emily assumed she was referring to Eric and Hetty, as they seemed the most likely to be able to do it.

"And they wouldn't mind?" Hannah asked, looking worried from what little of her that Emily could see.

"Not at all, especially if he uses some favors." Sam snorted "And don't ask me why he has so many favors with them. I don't know and I don't want to know." 

“I’m guessing that I don’t want to know either, so I’m not going to ask.” Hannah gave a hint of a smile. After that, they all fell silent, staring out the windows at the city passing around them. It wasn’t long before they got to the boathouse. When they got there, Kensi and Dom were waiting. 

“He’s in the first room, Nate is with him. And Hetty yelled at the CIA until they sent someone, Trent Kort I think his name was.” Kensi told them.

Emily looked at Callen and they both groaned, making similarly disgusted faces. “Joy.” Emily muttered “This is going to suck.” She had run into Trent Kort before while she was with the CIA and none of them turned out all that well. And by G’s expression, she could tell that he had done the same- she had never run into Kort while working with G.

“Uh, has anyone told Steven what’s going on?” Hannah asked, looking slightly nervous and still quite pale. 

“No, we just told him that you might be in danger.” Dom told her. 

“I guess I better go talk to him then. This is going to be a really bad conversation.” She sighed. “Where is he?”

“I’ll show you.” Dom said, leading the way to what Emily guessed was usually the interrogation room. 

“You’ve had run-ins with him before?” Sam asked once Dom had come back, looking at Callen. Emily happily let him take the question, as she most definitely didn’t what to think about what happened the last time she was even in the same city as that rat-bastard. 

“Yeah, once or twice. Even for a CIA agent he isn’t exactly a saint. There are rumors about what he did while he was retired from the CIA. And none of them are good. I don’t know if they are true or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.” Callen sighed. 

Sam turned towards Emily, and she sighed. “Pretty much the same as Callen said. I don’t like him and never will.” She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair, absentmindedly picking at a tangle that had appeared. “Did Hetty say when he was going to get here?” 

“By my guess, he should be here in about ten minutes if he doesn’t hit traffic.” Dom said, glancing at his watch. 

“Cool. Just enough time to do a little bit of paperwork and make it look like we weren’t just waiting for him to arrive.” Emily said, pulling some of said ever present paperwork out of her messenger bag that she had been carrying since they left the mission earlier. She sat at the long table in the middle of the room and spread the files out in front of her.

“Paperwork?” Callen asked, sounding slightly betrayed. 

“It’s an interrogation tactic that the BAU uses. It makes whoever you are talking to feel less important. And I’m for anything that makes Kort feel less important.” she pointed out, scrawling her name at the bottom of a page, and flipping to the next.

“Good point. Well, I don’t have any paperwork on me, but I do have my laptop. And someone can talk to Eric.” Kensi said, pulling the laptop out of a backpack that was on the couch. 

15 minutes later, a chime rang through the room. Emily almost didn’t hear it over the sound of Callen and Sam talking to Eric on the tv screen. “It’s the intruder alert.” Sam muttered over his shoulder, apparently sensing her confusion. 

Only a few moments later, Kort sauntered in, looking just like the smug asshole that Emily remembered him as. There was just something about him, maybe the bald head or the creepy blue eyes, or maybe it was the fact that he was cold, calculating bastard with little to no morality. Whatever it was, Emily definitely didn’t trust him. But she didn’t let that show- she didn’t want him to know what she thought about him. “Hello everyone.” he said as Emily glanced up from her paperwork, then signed her name again. Eric disappeared from the screen, “Why, hello Ms. Prentiss. I didn’t think that you would be here?” he said and Emily resisted the urge to wince. 

“As you can see, Kort, I’m here. Can we get on with the briefing?” Emily said. 

“Well, if you don’t want to chit chat, sure.” Kort said. He pulled a flash drive from his pocket and after directions from Dom, plugged it into the tv. “Karim Akbari.” he said as pictures appeared on the screen of an old silver haired man “Formerly a senior member of Savak, the Shah of Iran’s Secret Police in the 1970s.” Kort told them.

“Wasn’t Savak trained by the CIA?” Sam asked and Emily barely repressed a grin. She might have been a member of the CIA at one point, but she definitely didn’t like the Agency. Especially now that she didn’t do undercover work any more.

Kort just ignored him and continued “In 1979, the Shah was overthrown and went into exile. There were rumors that his supporters moved a half a billion dollars out of Iran into various bank accounts in Europe to be used to restore the Shah to power. But 18 months later, the Shah was dead.” 

“And the money was never recovered.” Kensi said, thoughtfully. 

“After the Shah’s death, Akbari started looking for it. While he didn’t find the money, he did find this man-” Kort said as a new face appeared on the screen. “Micheal Lawson. An American banker who lived in Iran. Akbari believed that it was Lawson who transferred the money and had access to the account numbers and passwords.” Around the table, heads popped up- this is why Hannah’s parents had been killed. She had the right to be afraid- and becoming Amy Callen had probably saved her life. If Akbari discovered that she wasn’t dead, he would probably come and kill her- after seeing if she knew where the money was of course. Emily barely resisted the urge to swear, but made sure that none of her interest showed on her face- the last thing that they needed was Kort figuring out why they were interested in Akbari.

Kort paused for a minute before he continued “Lawson was found murdered six weeks after the Shah’s death. Strung up by his feet to a light fixing and tortured, to be precise.” Kort said. Emily barely kept from grimacing. That was definitely not a fun way to go. “Akbari has always believed the money was still out there. He has just never found a new lead on where it might be. And there endeth the briefing.” he said, clicking the remote to turn the tv off and taking his flash drive back. 

“Which one does the CIA want the most?” Sam asked “Akbari or the money?”

“Akbari is a zealot. If he gets his hands on that money his plan is to buy nuclear weapons and invade Iran. Not a good outcome for any of us.” He said, focusing his cold gaze on Sam. “We're all on the same side here, Agent Hanna. Now, might I ask how you learned of Akbari in the first place?” 

“A CI said that he was in the country, and that we should probably toss him in a jail cell before he kills someone.” Callen shrugged “I remembered a briefing on him from when I was a member of the Agency. I asked our Tech analyst if he could dig up the file, he got kicked out, and here we are.” 

“Hmm. Well good luck, he’s very good at avoiding law enforcement.” Kort said and stalked back out. 

Sam waited until he was out of the boatshed then said “Well, thanks for the help asshole.” 

“You can say that again.” Eric said, his face reappearing on the screen. “Sorry I disappeared guys, but I was pretty sure that if he knew I was listening he wouldn’t have been happy about it. Anyway, I managed to find the car that Akbari got into when he left the airport, and Kaleidoscope is searching for the car now.”

“Got it, thanks Eric.” Callen said.

“Any time. Oh, and also, I used my handy bug scanning device, and Kort didn’t leave anything behind, just in case you wondered.” Eric said, and the screen blacked out.

“I’m going to talk to Hannah and see what else she might remember. Deeks, Kensi, Sam, can you look deeper into Akbari and see what else you can find? That briefing was suspiciously short considering that the CIA was once allied with Savak. They keep tabs on everyone, especially their allies.” Callen said.

“Twenty bucks says they just want a shot at finding the money before we do.” Sam snorted. 

“I’ll call some of my contacts in the middle East and see what they know.” Emily volunteered. 

“Thanks.” Callen nodded and walked down the hallway towards the interrogation room. 

Emily spent the next hour on the phone with various contacts she had and LEOs she had met at some point who had also been in the middle east and might know something. When they reconvened, she did not have happy news. “So, Kort understated how much Akbari wanted this money. Apparently, he really really really needed it because not only does he want to invade Iran, he’s in the market for a nuke to help him do so, along with a lot of other weapons. He’s in LA right now doing a little weapons shopping, and there is someone in Africa that is going to sell him a nuke once he gets his money. But he only has a limited time frame to get the money before the seller sells it to the next highest bidder. I have a few friends who are taking out the guy in Africa soon, and one of them told me about Akbari.” Emily said. 

“I truly love your endlessly long list of contacts, Emily.” Callen grinned. “Now, I have more bad news. When Hannah first moved into the house, her father showed her a hiding hole. In it was just enough room for a leather satchel and a young girl. When her father was being tortured, she hid in there. He refused to give up where the money was. He knew she was in the hiding spot. Now, I think all of the info on how to get the money was in the hiding spot, and he refused to give it up because he knew if he told Akbari where the money was, his daughter would die. He died to save her.” Callen finished. 

“So what happened to the satchel?” Dom asked, looking confused. Emily could admit that she was confused too, shouldn't the crime scene people have found it?

Callen grimaced, “Well, there is the bad news. Hannah never told anyone about what happened, and the house was demolished 20 years ago. The satchel was likely destroyed with it.” 

“So Akbari has no idea what he’s been searching for was effectively destroyed.” Kensi winced “That is not going to go over well when he finds out.” 

“Do your contacts know who he’s buying the weapons from?” Sam asked.

“No idea. All they know is that he is buying weapons. No idea from who.” Emily sighed. Her contacts were various people, some LEOs and some criminals that she had from her many years in both the CIA and the FBI. 

“Ok, does anyone know who is trying to sell off weapons right now?” Callen asked the group.

Everyone shook their heads- it wasn’t the fact that there was no one who was trying to sell weapons, it was the fact that there were too many. There were always weapons deals going down, and the team couldn’t guess which group as if they picked the wrong one, Akbari would already have his weapons and likely be out of the country. Criminals were constantly selling weapons, and there wasn’t much the cops could do about it unless there was solid proof, which in turn was why there were so many criminals selling weapons. It was a vicious never ending cycle. And Emily knew that there was no stopping it unless something drastic happened, like an undercover agent managing to infiltrate and work their way up to the very highest ranks then bring the whole thing down from the inside. She also knew that undercover agents weren’t likely to survive their first few weeks under, and that even after a successful op, there would always be someone who wanted revenge. A sister or brother who had no proven gang activity before, and thus could not be arrested. A daughter or son who grew up with their parents in prison, and likely to die there. And it would never truly be over. 

Just then Eric’s face popped back up on the screen “Hey, all. I found the car on another camera leaving the airport and am tracking him to his current location now. I just need to follow it to his current location. Hopefully I can track him from one camera to the next, but if there’s a gap I can just tell Kaleidoscope to look in that area for him and it should go faster now.”

“Great, thanks Eric.” Sam said. 

“I’ll hit you back when I have his current location.” He said, and the screen blinked out again. 

“Ok, so no matter who Akbari is getting the weapons from, it's likely going to be very defensible and there's going to be a lot of high power likely military grade weapons. We need to be ready for whatever might come at us.” Callen said, looking grim. “Let’s go back to Ops and get everything we need. And grab whatever backup we can, I don’t want to go into a gang war with just the four of us.” Callen ordered “Emily?” 

“I’ll stay here with Nate and the Taylors.” She said quickly, anticipating what he might say.

“Ok, thanks.” He gave her a quick smile then was back to all business. “Lets go get this guy.” he said and walked out the door, the team following him. 

For Emily, the next few hours were long and nerve racking. First, she and Nate filled in the Taylors with everything that had been learned, but that was over far too quickly. After that it was a long wait. They had moved into the main room after the team left as the Taylors no longer needed to hide from Kort, which meant that they could have the Tv on and Eric giving them occasional updates. Emily couldn't decide which was worse- not knowing anything, being in the boatshed and having updates, or being in ops and watching it all happen on the screen. She definitely knew that she would have been happier to have been with the team in the field.

She would have been a liability though. First, she couldn't do anything, as she wasn't officially here. The most she could do is sit in a car somewhere and label off who was escaping where, and where she thought they were going- she couldn't chase them herself. Added to that, the team, Callen excepted, didn't know how she worked, what she was likely to do in a crisis. They would have been tripping over each other's feet, and that could get people killed.

It felt like she had waited an entire day, but eventually Eric gave them the good news. "Akbari was killed in the shoot out, along with a few others. Callen and the team managed to capture several of his people and a few of the gangsters that he was buying the weapons from, including the gang leader, so it's a good day for the good guys today. And nobody was injured, not even a scratch. Apparently the spot that the gangster picked for the deal to go down was like the worst tactical position possible, so Sam was really happy about that. And ranting about the stupidity of criminals and how they are just making themselves easier to catch." He grinned.

"That's great, thanks Eric." Nate grinned. 

"Oh, and Callen is just beginning the usual post op debrief with Hetty, so he should get to the boatshed in like an hour and a half, maybe less depending on how nice Hetty decides to be to him." Eric told them.

"Thank you." Hannah spoke up, looking slightly nervous.

"Of course!" Eric said, and then the screen dissolved into black once again.

Hannah and her ex-husband glanced at each other, clearly awkward with each other's presence. Emily could tell that Steven was just waiting for them to go away so he could yell at her. This morning he had seemed regretful of how things ended between them, and maybe a little hopeful that they may someday work things out. Right now, he was just mad. Mad at being lied to about who Hannah was, about her past, about that she had been running from a monster who had been terrified her for about as long as she could remember. And that they had divorced over his unwillingness to give her the things that she wanted, when she hadn't even told him her real name.

"Are you guys hungry?" Emily asked. "Lunch was quite a while ago, and I don't know if you even ate. I know that I didn't." she grinned.

"Uh, yeah actually." Hannah said, looking surprised, rubbing her stomach.

"Yeah, that's normal under high stress situations. You are so focused on what is happening that you forget that you should be hungry or thirsty or whatever." Nate said.

Emily stood up from the couch. "Let's see what's in here." She said, walking over to the fridge. She opened it to a great large amount of empty fridge. There were a few water bottles, and a door full of various condiments, but that was it. "Nothing edible, unless you want to eat mustard by the bottle." she sighed.

"I could go get some food if you want." Nate offered "There's a taco truck around the corner, and a sandwich shop two blocks down."

"Sandwiches sound amazing," Hannah said. Nate turned towards Steven and he just nodded.

"Sandwiches sound good to me." Emily said when Nate glanced over to her. He passed a pad of paper around, and they all wrote their orders on it. By the time that Nate was back with their respective sandwiches, G had called and said he was about thirty minutes away. When Nate walked in, Emily noticed that he had an extra sandwich- presumably Callen's. While they ate, Nate and Emily had a long conversation about criminal profiling at the long table, while Hannah and Steven whispered arguments at each other. It wasn’t until Callen walked in that they stopped arguing. 

“Are we safe now?” Steven demanded, glaring at Callen.

“Yes, Akbari died and his allies were arrested. You should be safe.” Callen said calmly, not reacting to the angry man who was suddenly in his face. 

“Then can someone take me home. Now. I had things to do today, and now I haven’t done them.” he snapped. 

“Of course.” Nate said calmly. Emily wished him luck, she didn’t want to be stuck in a car with him, so she didn’t volunteer. Nate walked out the door, and Steven followed him, still grumbling. Callen sat down on the table slowly, staring at Hannah.

“Hannah.” Callen said freezing before he could get the rest of the sentence out. He took a deep breath in, then continued “Did Amy ever tell you my name?” 

“No” Hannah gave him a sad smile, looking like she wished she could give him all of the answers she likely knew he was looking for “It was always just baby brother. I’m sorry Callen.” 

“There’s an agent outside, waiting to take you home when you are ready.” Emily told her gently. 

“Thank you. Both of you. For everything.” Hannah smiled at both of them, before turning to walk out. “Bye.” she threw over her shoulder “And again, thank you!” 

“Can I meet with you again?” G asked. Hannah Lawson turned around, frowning. “It’s just, you are the only person I’ve met who knows my sister. I don’t mean the things like where did she come from, who am I stuff, but the little stuff- what was her favorite color, what food did she absolutely hate? Those sorts of things. I just want to know what she was like.”

“Of course. I’ve lived with her name these past few decades, it’s the least I can do.” Hannah smiled. “You know how to contact me. In a few days when this all settles down, call me. We can set up a place to meet.”

“Thank you so so much.” G said, giving her the full grin Emily so rarely saw. Smirks and half grins, yes, but G Callen didn’t grin like a little boy on a sugar rush often.

“Of course.” Hannah Lawson said, as she walked out, the agent that was waiting to drive her home, opened the door for her. 

Once she was at the door, G turned to Emily. “When are you leaving, are you going to be able to be here for that?”

“I have to leave in three days, so I can have a day to get everything together before I have to go back to work on Monday.” Emily said, frowning. “So if it happens in the next two and a half days, yes. Do you really want me there for the conversation, or just in the area with Sam.” Emily said apprehensive. She didn’t want G to think that she didn’t want to be there for him if she wanted, but she didn’t want to become a crutch for him either. Sam agreed with her, he thought this was a conversation that didn’t really need an audience. 

“In the area, if possible. I don’t know if we will be able to finish everything related to this mess in two days though. Once you throw another agency in, the clean up just gets worse and worse.” G groaned. 

“You think that is bad? Almost every single one of my cases is a two agency case. Fortunately the BAU gets you used to that amount of paperwork.” 

“I’ll stick with my morons with machine guns, thanks.” G laughed. 

Emily ended up not being able to be with G, as the mess of the last few days took too long to clean up to meet up with Hannah. She flew home, knowing that Sam would have his partner’s back- he always did. There were cases to solve and killers to catch- she would see G the next time the team came to LA.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter turned out to be almost 9,000 words, which was certainly a lot more then the 5,000 I had planned! I hope you liked it, and please review!


	4. The File

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: All of the Spanish in this chapter is a mix of what the actresses/actors said and google translate. Please forgive me for any mistakes!

Chapter 4

Once her ‘vacation’ ended, it was a few days before the BAU got another case. Emily was grateful that she had the few days of the standard 9-5 work schedule. Being at home every night and being able to decompress was really good after the non-stop action of the last week. But given how JJ flagged her down and sent her to the briefing room before she had even gotten to her desk, that break was apparently over. And she could tell that it was going to be a bad case from the moment she walked into the briefing room. For one, the team was gathering and Hotch wasn’t there. “Hey, where’s Hotch?” she asked as she walked into the room from the back entrance.

“Budget meeting” JJ grimaced. Emily agreed- she would hate to be the one stuck in those meetings.

“Maybe he’ll get us a raise.” Morgan said optimistically and Emily winced- that wasn’t likely to happen.

“They’re cutting, not raising. I just hope they don’t take the coffee.” Rossi told him.

“I’d quit.” Reid commented and Emily fought to keep a straight face.

“Yeah, that would save them like fifty bucks a week.” Rossi said dryly and the team snickered. Reid drank more coffee then anyone she had ever met. It was a constant joke around the unit that he was half coffee half genius.

“He’ll meet us on the plane.” JJ explained as she raised the remote.

“Where are we going?” Emily asked, turning to face the screen.

“Last night three decapitated heads were found in front of a sheriff’s station in the small border town of Terlingua Texas” JJ told them as pictures of the heads in coolers appeared on the screen.

“Three victims at once?” Rossi asked, sounding incredulous.

“Actually they appear to be in different stages of decomposition.” Reid said, frowning at the pictures of the heads.

“The ME confirmed that one of the heads is a day or so old, the other two appear to have died a few months ago, but the wound edges suggest that they were decapitated recently.” JJ told them.

“Dirt in their mouth, ears and nose. At some point these heads were buried.” Reid said, tapping at the photo with his pen.

“And then dug up.” Morgan finished grimly as he also picked up the pictures.

“Ok, then why the sudden need to display then?” Emily pointed out the part that was bugging her.

“Then need might not be so sudden.” Garcia said as she walked in, carrying her laptop. “Mexico, in 2009 alone, 10 heads in coolers, and the people belonging to these heads were killed just hours before they were found. Result of a battle between feuding drug cartels.” She explained as a picture of the heads in their coolers popped up on the screen.

“The DEA’s not interested?” Morgan asked. Emily would think that the DEA would want to at least be involved, if this involved possible drug cartels, if only to help with local sources and informants.

“They asked us to take a look at it. Considering the differing decomposition, this might not even be about drugs.” JJ said, gesturing at the pictures with the file she held in her hands. Emily hoped there were no drugs or gangs involved- when gangs went up against the FBI, things had a tendency to get messy.

“Then what do we have?” Rossi asked, looking around at the team.

“Well the victims are two males one female, so no gender preference. Staging the heads in front of the Sheriff’s station- that’s aggressive.” Emily pointed out, looking around the room at the team.

“All three victims are Hispanic.” Morgan pointed out, frowning.

“And unidentified.” JJ added “Terlingua has a large illegal population. It’s made IDing the victims that much harder.”

“He might be trying to make some kind of a political statement” Morgan leaned back in his chair. “Volunteer border patrols do a lot of personal policing down there.”

“Groups like the minutemen prize law and order above everything else. And those patrols serve their political agenda. Murder would be bad for their image.” Rossi pointed out.

“Staging the heads in front of a police station suggests the unsubs might be local. He’d have to have a knowledge of how to do something like that without being seen. So what we have is hundreds of miles of unincorporated desert and an endless supply of anonymous victims crossing the border every day..” Emily said, staring up at the screen, which showed a picture of Texas’ border line.

“It’s a serial killer’s perfect storm.” Morgan grimaced. The rest of the team winced. This was going to be messy. As soon as Hotch was out of his meeting, they all met on the plane and were in the air. Time was definitely of the essence.

They all started by rereading the files, making sure they hadn’t missed anything in their earlier briefing. Rossi closed his file and looked up “Explain this to me. The unsub hunts along the US-Mexico border. How big is that area?”

“Over 5,000 square miles of desert.” Reid said quickly.

“He could have gone undetected for years.” Rossi pointed out. In 5,000 miles of desert, there had to be lots of places to hide a body. So why give up the secrecy and display them?

“So why announce himself?” Emily wondered. She also wondered how many bodies there actually were, out there. She would put her money on a lot more then three.

“Something happened recently.” Hotch posited.

“What do we know about crime in Terlingua?” Rossi asked, looking over at JJ, who had been the one to do the initial research on the case, and thus would know more then what was in their files.

“It’s a stop over town. Immigrants stay only 24 hours before moving on, but that makes them narco-trafficking hubs. Outside of immigration violations, most of the arrests are drug related.” JJ said, looking around the jet. Emily winced- it sounded like a very small town with a very big problem, and there probably wasn’t nearly enough law enforcement to deal with it.

“That, my pretties, is an understatement.” Garcia said from the computer. “Anyone familiar with the Lugo Cartel out of Baja California? Their greatest hits- the pun being inescapable- include multiple brutal murders, along with importing and distributing nearly two tons of cocaine and copious amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2009. Now if we get in our BAU time machine, flash forward to now, a super cheap, highly addictive, and totally impure form of black-tar heroin just showed up on the streets of Terlingua and the DEA thinks the Lugo cartel is directly responsible.”

“So they are expanding their operation.” Emily summarized. That certainly didn’t sound good.

“Which is often announced by a wave of violence.” Derek said, appearing from the back and putting pieces of the MP-5 together.

“The Lugo cartel killed two DEA agents last year.” Hotch said grimly.

“We are going to need to watch our backs. To cartels, feds are fair game. There’s even usually a bounty so… We’re going to bring in the toys.”

“Be careful with those, I don’t need broken MP-5s on our budget.” Hotch said, glancing over at Morgan.

“Hey guys, here’s the thing, I don’t think that I technically have authorization to carry a weapon like that.” Reid said.

“You don’t.” Hotch and Morgan said at the same time.

Emily barely repressed a smile then said “You know we are going to have a victim pool that is extremely hesitant to talk to us.”

“Prentiss, you and Morgan start with the migrant community, see what inroads you can make. Stress that we are only there to catch a killer. Rossi and Reid, the M.E. is waiting to show you the heads.”

“Maybe they can tell us something.” Rossi said, picking up a picture of the heads.

When the plane landed, Emily and Morgan went off to find the various migrant group areas that Garcia could find. Unfortunately, none of them were willing to go anywhere near them, never mind talk to them. People literally ran from the area once they spotted the gold badges. So they headed to the police station, where Hotch told them the name of the reason why- Omar Morales. It wasn’t until the next morning, when the Sheriff found a head on a post outside her house, that they started making progress. They were ready to give the profile.

“We're searching for a personality type called a human predator- in the classic sense, a hunter.” Emily started once the deputies were gathered.

“All of the victims we have been able to conclusively tie to him are older or handicapped in some way. This suggests that he waits for someone to separate from the pack, looks for the weakest.” Rossi said.

“Like a lion or something?’ Sheriff Ruiz asked.

“Except a lion hunts food. This type of predator hunts power. It’s not about serving a need, and everything is a means to that end. We also believe that he makes his victims run through the desert in order to weaken them.” Reid explained.

“He may not be capable of taking them on in their strongest state, despite their age or infirmity. This suggests that he’s possibly handicapped in some way himself. Certainly weak, maybe small or even thin.” Morgan suggested.

“And an unsub who creates chaos and then attacks typically carries this through to all aspects of his life. He’s unlikely to be in a relationship.” Hotch said

“If he is it’s an abusive one. This guy gets off on control.” Rossi said grimly

“He will have tried to stay very close to the investigation. He’s well aware that the Sheriff started looking into the missing illegal immigrants.” Morgan added.

“How do you know that?” the Sheriff asked.

Hotch took the question “It’s probably why the decapitations started, as a countermeasure. He’s trying to throw off the investigation. It’s typical in an organized offender like this.”

“Cary Stayner, the Yosemite killer drove more then 50 miles to drop cigarette packs and drivers licenses at intersections to throw off suspicion.” Reid said.

“Start by looking back at everyone you’ve talked to in connection with these killings.” Rossi said.

“You need to start with people who are familiar with the immigrant journey.” Hotch suggested.

“Like who? Advocates? None of them will talk to us, I’ve tried.” the Sheriff said, looking defeated. Emily felt bad for the women. She came here, hoping for a semi-retirement position. She got the exact opposite, and her deputies, the people who should be standing behind her and supporting her were openly rebelling.

“Well, the coyotes want this guy caught, he’s hurting their business. And if the advocates really care about the immigrants, they’re gonna want to find whoever is responsible as well” Emily said, trying to reassure the woman.

“There’s one guy who can help.” Sheriff Ruiz said, nodding. “He runs an outreach program called Libertad.”

“Where can we find him?” Emily asked, unfolding herself from where she was sitting on someone’s desk.

“Clyde, you want to take them over to meet Richard Corral?”

“My lucky day.” Deputy Clyde grumbled. Emily felt her eyebrows raising. It was fairly common for officers to mouth off in their briefings, usually when they think that profiling was like reading a horoscope in the newspaper and actually believing that it was totally about them and made only for them. Usually, though, a sharp rebuke from another officer or someone on the chain of command would take care of it. She had never heard a deputy be openly rude to his commanding officer before. Terlingua’s Sheriff’s office had a definite problem, and Emily could tell that her team was just as happy about it as she was. She and Morgan followed the man out, and Emily was definitely not looking forward to being stuck in a car with the angry deputy.

Meeting Richard Corral was eye opening, to say the least. At first glance he ticked all of the boxes that their unsub would. The limp, the fact that he worked closely with illegals- if he knew the illegals, he probably knew where they crossed, which would make it easier to hunt them.

“These FBI agents want a word with you.” Clyde said rather arrogantly.

“You see the limp?” Emily asked Morgan.

Morgan’s response was to discreetly turn around and dial Garcia. “Hey baby girl, I need you to run a check on someone for me.” He muttered.

“What is wrong with you, Clyde?” Richard Corral said angrily. “None of my clients will trust me if I’ve got federal agents walking around here.” Morgan took another few steps away from her and the approaching men, trying to not look suspicious. With a second glance, though, Emily could tell that he cared for the immigrants, and wanted to help them. He wouldn’t go running around, killing his clients.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t spend your time helping illegals sneak into the country.” Clyde told him disparagingly. Emily winced. That was the last thing that he should have said- Corral likely wouldn’t want to help him now.

“They only want a better life!” Corral said, getting up in Clyde’s face.

“Then they ought to come in through the front door.” Clyde said back.

Emily sighed. They showed no signs of stopping anytime soon, and they really couldn’t piss Corral off if he would be willing to talk to them. “Uh, gentlemen.” she said stepping forward. “Another day? Mr. Corral, we understand your hesitation, but we aren’t here about immigration. We’re here about murder. Do you know anything about the heads that were left in front of the Sheriff's station a few days ago?”

“Everyone does. My clients are terrified.”

“Clients” Clyde scoffed.

“Deputy…” Emily said warningly. “Another man was murdered last night. An immigrant. We need to find out how this man finds his victims. Sheriff Ruiz said that you know more about these people’s journey then anyone.”

“Yeah.” Corral nodded.

“How many places are there to cross?”

“For every tunnel we find, there’s 12 more that we don’t know about.”

“And once they’ve made it?” Morgan asked.

“Runners keep documents in the trucks of their cars. Passports, fake social security numbers, green cards. It’s a big business. Especially in border towns.”

“Do you know these runners?” Emily asked, with a smidgen of hope. If they could find a runner to talk to, they might find someone to talk to who had seen their unsub. Any sighting of their unsub, no matter how distant or vague would help.

Corral shook his head “They change all the time.”

“If immigrants don’t find you, where do they go?” Morgan asked.

“Safe houses.” Corral shrugged “It’s supposed to be where they can find rest, water, food.”

He paused, but Morgan urged him on “Supposed to be?”

“It’s more like a prison. Until their families can pay off the coyotes.” Corral frowned.

“Where are these safehouses?” Emily asked. If they could find the recent immigrants, they probably would find someone to talk to who had seen their unsub.

“Are you kidding? They come and go faster then the tunnels.” Corral said incredulously.

“Ok, Thank you for your time.” Emily said, and they turned around and left. They went out to the car, and Emily called Hotch, telling him what they found.

They were on their way back to the station when Emily’s phone rang. “Yeah.” She said.

“You know we aren’t going to get very far if you keep arguing with illegals with everyone.” Morgan commented, looking in his rear view mirror at Clyde.

“This place used to be different.” he said sulkily.

“How do you mean?” Morgan asked.

“I don’t know. Just different.”

“Got it sir.” Emily told Hotch, then hung up. “We are going to split up possible safe houses. The closest one to us is 10 minutes from here.” she told the rest of the car.

“They ain’t going to be happy to see us.” Deputy Clyde said.

“You got a cell phone?” Morgan asked. They had their com units, but the deputies didn’t, so they would have to use cell phones to communicate during this.

“Yeah.” he said.

“Give me the number.” Emily requested briskly. The next 8 minutes they discussed plans, combining Clyde’s knowledge of the area with Garcia’s floor plans and Morgan’s tactical knowledge. By the time they got there, they had a workable plan.

“Deputy, we’re at the back door. Go ahead and knock.” she mumbled into her phone. After hearing his assent, she hung up so she could hold her gun steady with both of her hands.

She could hear him yelling “Police, open up!” so she wasn’t surprised when a terrified man ran out the back door just in time to run straight into Morgan’s outstretched arm.

“Nice.” Emily said as the suspect whimpered on the ground.

“I played a little strong safety in college.” He said, still pointing the MP-5 at the suspect.

“No idea what that means.” she said, shaking her head.

“FBI. We have a few questions for you.” Morgan said to the terrified man.

“No hablo inglés” the man said. _‘I don’t speak English’_

Emily sighed- well at least she would get to practice Spanish today “FBI. Tenemos algunas preguntas.” ‘ _FBI. We have a few questions._ ' The man gave them a terrified look, then began spilling everything that he knew. Before long she, Morgan and Clyde were escorting him to a building where he said the illegals were.

“In here?” Morgan asked. Despite him not understanding English, there tone appeared to be enough for him to understand because he nodded.

“You keep them in a stable?” Emily asked, disgusted. She walked towards the door as Morgan handed the suspect off to Deputy Clyde.

“You go to him?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Clyde said, grabbing the unhappy suspect’s arm.

“Go.” Morgan said, turning the flashlight on his MP-5 on. Emily pulled the door open, and Morgan rushed through it, with her right on his heels.

She heard the whickering of the horses, thinking that someone was going to feed them, but ignored it, focusing on looking for the poor immigrants instead. The first chained door she found opened to show an older man and a young boy sitting on mattresses on the straw. “Esta bien?” ‘ _Is everyone ok?_ ’ The little boy definitely didn’t look ok, he looked sad and tired. “Hay alguien más aquí?” _‘Is anyone else here?_ ”

“Mi mama.” the little boy cried, and Emily felt bad for the poor kid- to be separated from his mother during what was probably a traumatizing time. “El hombre se la llevó. Estabe llorando.” _‘The man took her away. I heard her crying._ ’ Emily mentally translated.

“His mother.” she told Derek. Just then they heard the weak sounding cries of a woman, probably the mother. He ran down one side of the barn, checking the stalls, while she checked the other.

“Prentiss.” he called. Emily ran over and he opened the door to find the beaten woman inside.

“Por favor.” she pleaded “El me violó. No dejes que mi hijo me vea así.” ‘ _Please. He raped me. Don’t let my son see me like this._ ’ Emily knelt down to her level

“Gentry! We need backup and medical units!” Morgan yelled to Clyde.

“Esta bien, querida.” she said to the terrified woman ‘It’s going to be ok, honey.’ she looked into the poor woman’s eyes “No dejaré que te vea así” _‘I won't let him see you like this’_

She gave a relieved sigh “Gracias.”

After that it was a blur of ambulances and every single law enforcement member in the city was on the small farm- Hotch and Rossi had struck out on the other two properties, which looked recently occupied, but there was nobody there. They had likely left town the moment that they heard the FBI was in town. Considering how small the town was, there were likely a few people from surrounding towns as well. It wasn’t until they started the interrogations of Jose and Elana. They had discovered that Jose did in fact know English, so Morgan went to interrogate him while Emily talked to Elana and her son.

“Estábamos en medio del desierto. Mi esposo… Ha estado enfermo… no pudo mantener el paso. Él no nos dejaba esperar con él.” Emily winced. It was one hell of a sob story and in this job she heard a lot of them. _‘We were in the middle of the desert. My husband… he’s been sick… couldn’t keep up. He wouldn’t let us wait with him’_

“Her husband was sick and stayed behind.” Emily translated for JJ and Deputy Boyd who were watching from a few feet away.

“Just like the others.” JJ said. They had no doubt that Elana’s husband was the latest victim of their unsub.

“Recuerdas algo acerca del viaje?” Emily asked _‘Is there anything you remember about the trip?’_

“El sol. Yo vi el sol.” the boy said. ‘ _The sun. I saw the sun._ ”

“Quieres decir la luna. Estabo oscuro, mijo.” his mother said gently ‘ _You mean the moon. It was dark, my love_ ’ She turned to Emily “Quiere decir la luna.” _‘He means the moon.’_

“No. Quiere el sol.” the boy contradicted her ‘ _It was the Sun._ ’ Emily nodded at him to show that she believed him, and kept writing.

Emily noticed the deputies face go oddly stiff out of the corner of her eye, but she put it down to the racist tendencies that she had seen out of the deputies in Terlingua. “Can he have soda?” Elana asked.

“Yeah, yeah of course. Come on big man, let’s go get a soda.” JJ said, gently escorting the boy out of the room and down the hall.

“Encontrarás a mi esposo, ¿verdad?” the woman asked. Emily’s heart sank as she translated. _‘You will find my husband, right?_ ’ How was she supposed to tell this woman who had been through so much that her husband was dead?

The next morning, they started with bad news. Sheriff Ruiz was missing, and within moments of them walking into the station, she was dead. And it was the way that she was dead that was suspicious. Omar Morales wouldn't kill the one person who thought he wasn’t the unsub. But Nobody knew about it except Ruiz and Hotch. At least that’s what they thought until JJ told them about the speaker and how she and Boyd were listening in. And that Boyd and Clyde Gentry had gone to pick up the most likely suspect, Morales. They all scrambled for their cars, and Emily managed to beat Morgan to the driver's seat as she followed Hotch to the scrap yard where Morales was supposed to be.

Emily grabbed her phone and managed to call Gentry despite having one hand on the wheel and most of her attention on the road.

“Gentry.” a voice answered.

“Gentry, this is Agent Prentiss. If he’s near you don’t say anything. We think the unsub may be Deputy Boyd. Gentry are you there?” she asked after hearing nothing but breathing. Then the line cut out. That was not a good sign. Morgan radioed it up to Hotch, and they drove faster, as fast as they could safely go.

When they got there, Hotch had Reid and JJ guard the cars, so Boyd couldn’t take them if he was still in there. But given that Emily couldn’t see Cylde’s squad car, she was guessing that Boyd was long gone. But he could still be here- Hopefully it was Gentry who picked up the phone and he ran, and his phone was destroyed during his attempted escape. But given to looks of the body leaning against the wall as they pulled up, that wasn’t what happened. As she followed Hotch deeper into the scrapyard, the worse it got.

They saw the bodies of the gang members as they walked through, but it wasn’t until they got inside did it get worse. “It’s Gentry.” one of the deputies Id him.

“Does this look legit to you?” Morgan asked, and taking another look at the scene, Emily could admit it didn’t. Morales’ body was facing the wrong way, for the first part.

“Omar took shotgun hits” Rossi pointed out “Gentry only has a pistol. There’s no powder residue on Omar’s hand’s either.”

Emily crouched down to see a very broken cell phone on the ground near Gentry. “Oh my God. What if he heard me?”

The team tensed. That would not be good. “Gannon. Where would Boyd go?” Hotch asked.

“I don’t know.” Gannon said.

“This is no time to be covering up. He killed your boss and Gentry.” Morgan snapped.

“I’m not covering. I don’t know the guy that well. No one does. He’s a loner.” Gannon snapped back.

Hotch pulled his phone out- there was a quicker way to get answers “Garcia. Deputy Boyd is our unsub. He has a police radio. Can you track it?” he paused for a minute as Garcia said something “Call the Sheriff’s station. Get the serial numbers from the dispatcher.” he said as he rushed out of the building, the team following.

They all regrouped standing around the engine of Hotch’s SUV, which had a map spread around it. “We profiled him as a hunter.” Emily pointed out.

“Well, now he’s the hunted.” Rossi said grimly. In short, he was backed into a corner, and when they found him, like a wild animal, he would attack. This wasn’t going to end well, Emily sighed. It never did.

“He’ll go someplace he feels safe.” Morgan said.

“Someplace he knows he can control.” Reid added.

“Home?” Rossi asked

“No, I think a preplanned location.” Hotch said.

“Sir, I’ve got him. He’s heading northbound.” Garcia interrupted.

“Interstate?” Morgan asked.

“No, he’s not on a road at all. He’s driving through the desert.” She told them, and Emily winced. Who knows what he had hiding out there?

“Keep tracking him Garcia.” Hotch ordered.

“He’s running.” JJ pointed out.

“Not home for sure.” Gannon told them. “He lives in a trailer out west of town.”

“So where’s he running to?” Rossi asked.

“Morgan, Prentiss, Reid, Deputy, will you take them to his house, see what you can find. I need you radio.” he said to Gammon as they all started moving. Gannon handed it to him.

“What are you going to do?” Morgan asked

“Keep him busy.” Hotch said grimly

When they arrived at the trailer it looked exactly as Emily expected it to- a run down mess. And when they walked in, it only got worse. “Oh god.” She said, coughing and gagging.

“We’re definitely in the right place.” Morgan said, slightly hoarse.

“Guys, just breathe through your nose like normal. Smell is the weakest sense. In a few minutes you won’t even notice it.”

“What about the taste?” Prentiss gagged.

“I think that’s in your head.” Reid said thoughtfully as Gannon coughed.

“All right, spread out, let’s find where this guy is headed.” Morgan said.

Emily headed towards the end of the trailer and opened a door. “Oh god,” she said, gagging again and covering her nose. “I found where the source of that smell is coming from.” she looked into the blood covered room. “Oh.” she said again.

“Oh my god.” Morgan said “Well, this is where he decapitated them.”

When Reid spoke up, it was a relief to walk away from the little room. “Guys come and look at this.”

“I’m ready for that smell weakness to kick in at any minute Reid.” She called back. Standing near that room had only made it worse. She probably was never going to get it out of her clothes. It made her wonder how the deputy had managed to keep his uniforms from smelling too. And how he managed to live in that smell.

“Listen. ‘Golden Harvest Grain and Feed suffered another setback today in the ruling over the death of Foreman Fred Boyd.’” Reid said, reading from an article that was stapled onto the wall.

“Boyd survived by his son Richard.” Morgan pointed out.

“Didn’t the last victim’s child say that he saw the Sun when he crossed?” Reid asked, pointing to a picture of the sun on the barn.

“Yeah.” Emily nodded.

“Golden Harvest. That’s out north of town.” Gannon said.

“Hotch.” Emily said into her phone as she jogged down the steps out of the disgusting trailer. “There’s an old grain and feed barn north of town called Golden Harvest. Boyd’s father was killed there. Garcia's searching for an exact address now.” she told him. “Ok, right. We’ll see you there.”

“His victims.” Reid said grimly. Emily looked up startled while she closed her phone to see the patches of bare dirt where grass grew long around it.

“Reid. I want you to stay here with the crime scene, all right?” Morgan asked.

“I’ll call the state and local bureau offices. They will be here as soon as they can.” Emily said over her shoulder as she and Morgan jogged to the Tahoe.

As they drove away as fast as Emily safely could, they could hear Hotch and Rossi talking over the comms. They were commenting on the roads, and little problems that they could see, trying to make the drive faster for Emily and Morgan. It was when they were almost there that she heard Hotch say “Try not to shoot that inside the car.”

“You mean try not to deafen you?” Rossi asked.

“Exactly.” Hotch said.

“There’s his vehicle.” Rossi said. Emily assumed that they were almost if not all the way to the barn, and put her foot down harder, trying to catch up, but it was hard on the dusty dirt track that she was driving on.

“You take the side door. I’ll take the front.” Emily heard Hotch say as he turned off the car. Car doors opened, then closed again “Watch the windows up top.” Then a few long moments of silence while Emily continued pushing the poor Tahoe way past what should have been it’s limits. Emily was almost proud of the car, it was taking everything she threw at it with ease. Then, all of a sudden, gunfire. She could hear bullets pinging off metal “Contact-” Hotch shouted and his next few words were indistinguishable thanks to the other sounds around him.

Emily and Morgan got closer and closer until they were able to see the barn, then Hotch and Rossi’s SUV, and the pile of metal and wood that they were hiding behind. “Do you have a shot?” Hotch yelled to Rossi.

“I can’t see anything.” Rossi said as a ATV came screaming out of the barn heading straight for Hotch and Rossi.

“I got him. I got him” Emily said, heading straight for Boyd.

“Prentiss look out!” Morgan yelled, and Emily reflexively flinched away when a bullet hit the windshield and went right in between the two of them. When Morgan raised the MP-5 and started shooting straight through the windshield at the unsub she winced, but kept on driving. It was so loud it hurt! She could feel her eardrums protesting, but managed to keep her hands on the wheel and not clamped around her head like she wanted to do. The second Boyd hit the ground, she stopped the car, and Morgan immediately hopped out to go make sure he was dead.

“You all right?” Hotch yelled, warily approaching Boyd’s body

“Yeah.” Morgan yelled back

“No.” Emily yelled as the other three approached Boyd, one had clapped over her ear. “Are you out of your mind? You blew out my eardrum!”

“What did you want me to do? He was coming right at us!” Morgan defended himself.

“I told you I had him.” Emily said loudly, trying to speak over the ringing of her ear. It wasn’t working too well.

“He was shooting at us Emily.” Morgan said, and Emily knew he was right, but her ear really hurt, and he could have stuck the gun out the window and shot him like that, so she continued.

“Well, you could have given me a heads up.” Emily said as Hotch confirmed that Boyd was actually dead.

“The loaded MP-5 and the lunatic shooting at us wasn’t enough? Come on.” Morgan huffed. Emily just sighed and walked back towards the car to assess the damage, shaking her head to try and get rid of the ringing.

Emily stopped glaring at the holes in the windshield of her car when she heard her phone ringing. It rang oddly, seeming to be drilling a hole through her head, but she hit accept and lifted it to her ear anyway. “Hello?” She said, waiting. She didn’t hear anything. Then she realized that she had lifted the phone to her bad ear by habit. “One sec.” she said, switching the phone to her other ear.

“Can you hear me now?” she heard G ask.

“Yeah I’m good. I forgot that I couldn’t hear out of that ear all that well right now.” Emily sighed, waiting for the snickering to follow.

G didn’t disappoint her- he wasn’t very good at hiding the muffled chuckles that she could hear. “How did you end up forgetting that you can't hear out of one ear? And why can’t you hear out of one ear?”

“It involves the very assault rifles that I said just a few days ago that I would let your team handle, and my partner shooting out the windshield of the car I was driving to shoot our unsub. Because there is nothing better then blowing out my eardrum of course.” Emily said, the sarcasm practically dripping from the words.

“Of course. Nothing that I would like to do more.” G said just as sarcastically.

“Anyway, why’d you call?” She asked.

“Hetty forced me to take a day off and I’m bored.” he sighed. “She said I was pushing too hard when I wasn’t supposed to even be back at work yet.”

“That makes sense.” Emily sighed, knowing that Hetty was right, but that G would never admit it.

“But I’m fine.” G whined.

“Well, just think about it.” Emily said “If a day off now prevents a week off later, which are you going to choose?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just aggravating. Nate’s practically stalking me, wanting to know how I feel about everything that’s happened”

“Talk to him. It will help.” Emily encouraged him. Nate was right to watch Callen closer then normal. He had gone through a lot of changes in a very short time and would need the help.

“I am.” Callen sighed “I just really don’t like it.”

“How is everything going otherwise?” Emily asked, running a hand through her dust filled hair.

“I met with Hannah yesterday. She told me this story of how I got this scar on my hand because Amy was pulling me around in a wagon and it fell over. When she told me about it, I actually remembered it happening! I remembered Amy.” he said, choking on a sob that seemed to be forcing its way out.

“That’s awesome G, congrats!” Emily smiled, happy for her friend.

“I was kind of wishing that if I remembered the one, that I would remember more, but that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Well, I’m happy that you have the one.” Emily said. “Maybe as you learn more about her, more memories might come, but if not, you will have the one.”

“Yeah, I’m glad I have the one.” he sighed, sounding slightly calmer. Just then, Morgan yelled her name, waving from the barn. “I can hear that, so I’ll let you go. Bye, Emily.”

“I’ll talk to you later, Callen. Bye.” she said, and hung up, walking over to see what Morgan had found.

It was another full day before they left Terlingua. The Sheriff's office, now down to only two deputies, needed some help until reinforcements could arrive from other cities around the state. Terlingua was going to have problems, even with the terrifying serial killer removed. After finishing their paperwork, the BAU moved on to reading through the cold cases, and by the time that their plane was ready, they had solved 3, and had five leads for the deputies to check out on other cases. Garcia had spent the day tracking down the few names they had for the immigrants, and alerting their families of what happened to them. Emily had also spent some time at the nearest doctor’s office, who had determined that her eardrum had not actually ruptured, but it had been close. He advised her to stay away from loud noises just in case, and to contact her doctor back in DC, but otherwise she should be fine.

Before they left, they went back to Boyd’s trailer one last time. “The state’s sending out a crime scene team.” Hotch said.

“It’s going to be hard to identify the bodies without missing persons reports.” Rossi said.

“I called that advocate, Richard Corral. He’s contacting families with missing relatives. He’s going to try and get some DNA.” Emily told them.

“That’ll help.” Hotch said, and Emily agreed. At the stages that some of the bodies were, DNA was going to be the only thing that would identify them.

“This is a mess.” Morgan sighed, looking around at the grave sites which hadn’t been disturbed yet, waiting for the state’s crime scene team, which was better funded and equipped to deal with it.

“It would have been a bigger mess without Sheriff Ruiz, and it would still be happening.” Hotch said.

“Did she have any family?” Emily asked softly. All the poor woman was looking for was a semi retired position, and instead she found a serial killer, and had died a long slow painful death.

“I already have Garcia checking into it.” JJ assured them.

“I’m going to call Brooklyn homicide, talk to some of the guys I know there. They’ll honor her shield.” Hotch said.

“That’s good. An ex-NYPD detective would like that.” Morgan nodded. As a former cop himself, Morgan took the deaths of fellow LEOs hard, the entire team did. But the brotherhood of blue was strong in Morgan, and the very idea of a cop being killed by one of her own deputies hurt him more then the rest of the team.

They were all silent for a moment, staring around at the atrocities in front of them. “Let’s go home.” Hotch said, leading the way to the cars, and the team was more then happy to follow.

Emily stared into the setting sun as the plane rose into the air. This had definitely been a hard case. Any case with as many bodies as this one had was going to be a hard case, but the fact that their unsub was a cop only made it worse. Logically, she knew that many serial killers liked the authority and respect that came with uniforms and being a cop was something that they definitely liked, but to meet a serial killer and not realize it until days later was something that was going to stick with her for a while. Because of that, it was a relief when Rossi and JJ stood up to raid the plane’s alcohol stash. With the help of it running through her veins, she somehow managed to fall asleep.

“How’s the ear?” A particularly aggravating voice greeted her as the team walked into the BAU bullpen.

“Kort what the fuck are you doing here.” Emily sputtered, glaring at the man leaning against her desk. Her hand twitched towards her gun, but she rested it against her messenger bag instead.

“Have fun Agent Prentiss.” the man sneered, and walked past them out the door and into the waiting elevator without a pause.

The team stood sputtering “Who was that?” Morgan asked, sounding insulted.

“Trent Kort. CIA. A scumbag sleazy worm.” Emily said with disgust, carefully approaching her desk. Kort’s love of bombs was well known, though she doubted he would set one off in the middle of the FBI. She would definitely be inspecting her car carefully when she went home though. Surprisingly, nothing had changed about her desk except for two things- how large the pile in her inbox was, and one singular file propped up on her keyboard, marked CIA, CLASSIFIED. “This can’t be good.” Emily sighed. She glanced around the bullpen and noticed Anderson, who had obviously stayed late to work on paperwork “Hey Anderson, how long was he here?” she asked.

“Not long, only about a half an hour. He stood by your desk the entire time, I was watching to make sure he wasn’t going to go rifling through it. I offered to take the file and give it to you when you got here, but he refused, he said that it needed to go into your hands directly. Then he just stood there staring creepily, until you walked in. That man has a really creepy stare.”

“That he does.” Emily sighed. She glared at the file, wondering what the CIA might want. It couldn’t be good if they had Trent Kort play delivery man.

“So?” JJ asked.

“This can’t be good. I have no idea. Probably a follow up of the ridiculously classified mess that happened when I was in LA.” Emily sighed.

“Do I even want to know?” Hotch sighed.

“Probably not. I made sure that I was not written down as there or anything, and I never saw any of the action, so I should be fine. If this file doesn’t have some sort of blackmail or something that he wants me to do, I should be fine. Unfortunately that was Kort, and he is the most boneheaded bootlicking buffoon I’ve ever met.” Emily sighed.

“You really hate him.” Morgan snorted.

“Yes. How could you tell.” Emily said dryly

“You only get really creative when insulting someone when you really hate them.” He grinned at her.

“Glad to know you are actually profiling me when we agreed not doing it is actually allowed.” Emily sighed, though she knew that profiling didn’t exactly come with an off switch. She profiled her teammates all the time. They profiled her all the time. They all just pretended that they didn’t.

“Aren’t you going to open the file?” JJ asked.

Emily just glared at the file harder, wishing it would just light on fire already. “Ugh. I guess.” she sighed. With extreme amounts of trepidation, she opened the file to the first page. “Huh. It’s a mission report of some kind. For the CIA. And it looks old. Agent was- shit.” she said, her eyes widening. She slammed the file shut and threw it in her bag. “Nope. not reading.” she scoffed.

“That mean of a file?” Derek teased, a grin on his face.

“Yes. Yes it is.” Emily said, and turned around to leave.

“Emily.” Hotch’s stern voice stopped her. “Is there anything I need to be worried about.”

“No, it’s just a lie a friend has been telling for many many years. No blowback on me. I think Kort gave it to me because I would actually call her on it, instead of letting her bury it.” she explained, then managed to get out the door and headed for the stairs before any of the team could call her. She didn’t want to have to wait for the elevator and have them catch up with her right now. She practically ran down the stairs, hoping that none of her team was following her, wanting to know what was truly happening. They really wouldn’t like the answer she would give them if they did.

Once she got out of the building and to her car, she sped away towards her apartment. She needed to do this somewhere with no video cameras, and that certainly wasn’t anywhere in the FBI.

She got back to her apartment in a shorter then normal amount of time, then checked for any spy cameras and closed the blinds, hiding the fantastic view of the Capital outside. She slapped the file down on the coffee table, then collapsed onto the couch, staring at it. She definitely didn’t want to make this call. It would probably ruin some of her friendships. But it was a choice of what was right over what was easy. And she would lose more friends if she just shut up about it.

She picked up the phone. “Hey Hetty. You busy?” she asked. “Cause Trent Kort just gave me a very interesting file about an agent named Clara Callen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter is late! In my defense I've been busy with what feels like an entire herd's worth of sick horses, which seriously depleted my writing time. I really liked that Criminal minds put the burst my eardrum scene in the episode, it really made that scene feel more realistic. I did a lot of research for this episode- believe it or not, you can actually go on a plane with a burst eardrum, it just hurts during take off, landing, and turbulence. Also Terlingua is a real town- one that in 2010 (when season 5 of Criminal Minds came out) it had a population of 58 people. That seemed a little too small to have 5 deputies, so I'm using the 2000 population of 267, as it seemed to match what the episode said a bit better. Thanks for reading and please review!


	5. The Case

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning, guys- this one got kinda bloody. Nothing that isn't normal for Criminal Minds, of course, but it's a bit bloodier then the other chapters so far.

Chapter 5

“Hey, Prentiss” A familiar voice yelled. Emily turned around, searching for whoever called her among the crowd of people. “Over here!” an arm in a leather jacket waved, and she saw Mick Rawson grin at her.

“Hey Rawson.” She said, walking over. “What’s up.” 

“Hey, don’t you have a bunch of contacts in LA? We are being sent there for a case, and it sounds like it will be a weird one. The sort of weird that makes contacts really useful. Please? I’ll buy you dinner.” he grinned charmingly.

“That depends on what type of case it is. Most of my contacts and CI’s aren’t mine, or not only mine. I know some cops, but then you will probably meet them too. I have friends who work in the SoCal area though, and they have more contacts then politicians have staff.” she told him.

He snorted “It seems like it's some sort of the hitman turned all around opportunistic serial killer things.”

“In that case, yes I have a contact who probably knows something, and can at least point you to who it might be, and I know my friends can definitely find someone, but they won’t talk to you without me there.”

“Well, your team is on stand down, because of Morgan and Reid’s injuries on that one case with the kidnapped kids, right?” he asked. 

“Yeah, and we were on the last few cases, so they want us in the office for long enough to actually finish the mountains of paperwork that have been piling up. Especially that one suicide case. The brass weren’t all that happy to find out that there was a serial killer we knew nothing about until he killed himself and created the world's largest confession. They were even less happy after the case in Alaska that ended with an angry mob trying to kill our unsub.” Emily sighed. Hotch had come back from that meeting looking like he was trying to decide what would be the easiest way to kill everyone in the meeting, dispose of their bodies, and not get caught. 

“Well, we get our assignments from the director, and I have a feeling that if we tell him the case might be finished faster if you come with us, he’d probably go along with it. That’s if you want to come of course.”

“Case vs. a literal fucking mountain of paperwork?” Emily snorted “What do you think I’ll choose? Case!”

“Awesome. Thank you so much. I’ll call Coop and get him to talk to the Director.”

“I’ll go talk to Hotch. Call me when you get an answer from the director?” she asked, mentally going over the state of her go bag and what she might need. 

“Sure. Thanks!” He grinned, and turned away, already pulling out his phone. She rushed to the bullpen, and went up the stairs to Hotch’s office. She noticed the team giving her weird looks- it wasn’t often that she went up to Hotch’s office without files in hand, and they knew she was going to get lunch, so she would admit that the change was weird. She knocked on the door and waited for him to respond before she opened the door. 

“Hey Hotch, something might have come up and I wanted to run it past you.” She said, poking her head in the door. 

“Come on in. I’m just doing paperwork at the moment.”

“How much have you heard about Cooper’s current case?” She asked, sitting in one of the chairs in front of the desk. 

“Just that it was one of the gang sort of cases and that it was ugly.” He said frowning.

“Well, Rawson wanted to know if I have any contacts in that area, and if they could do anything? I told him that they probably could, but they wouldn’t give the info up to anyone they didn’t know, and he asked if I could come on the case with them. He’s running it past Coop right now.”

“I don’t have any problems with it, just try to get some of that paperwork done?” He said.

“Sure. Thanks Hotch” She smiled, and stood up. “I’ll get out of your hair now, I need to grab my go bag, and talk to Rawson, and probably the rest of his team. 

“Ok, and good luck Prentiss. Keep me in the loop?” He asked, already glancing down at his paperwork. Emily didn’t blame him- it made her mountain look like a small hill. 

“Yeah, and if the director kills the idea I’ll tell you.” Emily said, then walked towards the door “Bye.” She said, waving, and snickered at his mumbled reponse. She was just glad that she didn’t have to do his paperwork- and he had a son at home that he was trying to get home to! She loved her current job, and while she wanted that office someday, it definitely wasn’t something she wanted anytime soon. She wanted to be able to run around and chase criminals for as long as she could, and while Hotch’s position wasn’t a deskbound one, with her name and connections, people would assume that she would want to get as high on the ladder as she could. Truthfully though, Hotch’s position as unit chief would be as high as she would want. 

Emily went straight to her desk and put the file she had been working on, and about half of her inbox into her laptop bag, only barely able to squeeze her laptop in after. “What’s happening?” Morgan asked.

“I’m going with Cooper’s team on a case because I have a few CIs that will be helpful.” Emily explained hurriedly, checking her desk for anything she needed. 

“Lucky.” Reid said, looking at his large stack of paperwork. Little did he know that Morgan had been slipping a few of his reports in throughout the day. Emily hadn’t, though as A, her desk was in a spot that made it almost impossible to do, and B, she had taken a bunch of files home last night to try and catch up. Obviously, she had failed, but she was farther ahead then Morgan was, even with handing his work off to Reid. Reid was about even with her, thanks to his ridiculously fast reading speed. And that he also liked to take work home at night. And the fact that he had more reports to do thanks to the fact that he took part in the takedown during the last case. And that he had a few medically required days off that Emily didn’t have to take, thus completing paperwork before he even got started. Now that she was thinking about it though, she was kind of annoyed that he managed to get caught up on three days of work just like that. Just a perk of being a genius, she sighed. 

“Oh, I still have to do the paperwork. It will just be interspersed with moments of extreme danger.” Emily told Morgan, snorting. Just then, her phone pinged- a text from Mick, saying that the director okayed it, and that he would meet her downstairs in the lobby. 

“Yeah, but you still get to run around and do stuff.” Morgan said mournfully, looking at the bandaged foot he had propped up on a spare chair he had stolen from a nearby desk. James was going to be pissed when he came back from lunch to discover that his chair had grown legs and walked right over to Morgan. Emily was slightly glad that she would miss it. Reid was similarly injured, with his left hand in brace.

Emily laughed, swinging the now heavy bag over her shoulder and grabbing her purse. “Don’t trip over your crutches, fall on your face and break your nose on the ground before I can get back to film it, Morgan.” she snickered, heading for the exit.

“Really Prentiss? Really?” Morgan snorted and Emily grinned over her shoulder at him before the frosted glass door swung shut behind her. A quick trip in the elevator down, and she met Rawson just past the security. 

“All good?” He asked.

“All good.” she confirmed “Though I don’t have my go bag with me as I thought I wouldn’t be in the field, so I’ll need to stop by my apartment and get that.”

“That’s fine. We are actually closer to the airport then the rest of the team, so you won’t be late or anything.” Mick reassured her. They went out to the FBI parking lot, and Emily slid into her car while Mick climbed onto a sleek black motorcycle. She wondered why he would drive a motorcycle in December, though it wasn’t snowing today, at least. He had to be freezing- it was windy, and the wind from the motorcycle itself probably didn’t help either. It didn’t take her long to get to her apartment, where she just ran upstairs, grabbed her go bag, tossed a few things in, then ran straight back down. Though Mick had beaten her to the airport, she still managed to beat the rest of his team. 

The rest of the team arrived a few minutes later, parking their cars in their designated spots in the aircraft hanger. Emily had taken one of the guest spots so she didn’t steal anyone’s usual place. “Hey Emily.” Gina grinned as she climbed out of her car. “Glad you are coming with us, this one looks like it's going to be bad. Oh, and I don’t know if you’ve met, but this is Beth Griffith, she’s joined the team since we worked that case together.” she said, waving a hand towards the petite, dark haired agent. 

“Nice to meet you.” Emily smiled, reaching forwards to shake her hand.

“Yeah, I wish it was under better circumstances.” Beth sighed.

“Is everyone ready?” Cooper asked the group, and everyone nodded. “Then let's go, we don’t have any time to waste.” They all filed onto the plane, and within a half an hour it was up in the air. 

“Ok, let's get started. The LAPD asked us to come down because they think that they have a rouge hitman on their hands. He’s killed 11 people so far that they’ve been able to find, and probably more that they haven’t.” Sam said

“Why did they wait so long to call us in?” Beth asked, frowning. She had a point, usually someone notices the killer way before that. 11 confirmed kills was a lot, and usually the BAU gets called in before that. 

“At first they all looked like gang killings, but then the signature got noticed by the detective we’ll be meeting, after he saw two kills by this killer in 24 hours.” Sam explained.

“Ouch.” Prophet “Is that kill rate normal for him?”

“Hello team, plus one! It is, unfortunately. ” Garcia exclaimed from the laptop screen that had just turned itself on. “He has an impressive kill rate. It started two weeks ago with one then two days off, then another, then a day off, then a kill, then a day off, and ever since then there’s been a kill a day, with day fourteen having two kills in one day! And worse, there are probably more, I just haven’t found them yet.”

“How was he able to hide that for so long?” Emily asked, confused. Even in a city as big as LA, someone should have put the pieces together sooner. 

“Easy- they all look like gang kills. And he spreads them out over a large area.” Mick pointed out, then got up and walked over to the coffee machine. “Coffee anyone?” Emily nodded, and he grinned at her and nodded back. 

“Me too. And according to google, the LAPD covers an area of 498 square miles, with a population of 4,030,904 people. 11 kills can easily hide in that.” Beth pointed out. 

“Did you know that in 1910, the LAPD was the first police department to hire a female police officer in the United States, Alice Stebbins Wells? Go ladies!” Garcia said cheerfully. “And as for why, the LAPD is chronically understaffed- it has one of the lowest ratios of police personnel to population served despite LA having the third largest PD in the US. It has one police officer for every 426 residents, while NYC has one police officer for every 228 residents.” 

“Is Reid sitting over your shoulder?” Emily said suspiciously. 

“Maybe.” Garcia grinned. 

“Oh, go away Reid. Go work on that mountain of paperwork. Back to the case- that explains the problems.” Emily frowned. “What are the similarities in the victims? How were they connected?”

“Their very bloody deaths.” Gina said grimly, glaring at the file in front of her, then passing it over to Emily. She took one glance in- bloody was an understatement.

“He stabs them with a machete, and then shoots them in the head to kill them.” Mick frowned. “The thing is, the mutilation has been getting worse and worse with each kill. This last geezer would have died within a minute if the bullet didn’t kill him first. And the next one will probably die of the stab wounds and the bullet will be post-mortem.” 

“So what makes them look like gang kills other then the torture then mercy killing?” Emily asked.

“They were all within the area of the local MS13 clicas, or a cell of MS13 members. Los Angeles has about 20 different clicas alone. In the early 2000s, the MS13 began a process of internal reorganization inside El Salvador. This reorganization was driven by two relatively new realities: 1) most of the gang’s leadership was incarcerated; and 2) the gang had grown into a huge organization. The result was chaos on the streets, lack of control inside the prisons, and vulnerability in both places. To combat these trends, the gang instituted internal rules and created a more hierarchical organizational structure in each of the areas where it was operating. To begin with, they created a group of cliques that they called “programs.” Sam explained looking around the table.

“These clicas operate under the aegis and control of a program coordinator, which in most places is referred to as a “corredor,” or a “runner.” These leaders are chosen based on longevity, history, commitment, pedigree and personality. In places where the MS13 is very organized, such as Los Angeles and El Salvador, these programs answer to a ruling council. This council goes by different names in the different countries and major metropolitan areas where the gang operates. In Los Angeles, this is called a “mesa,” or “table.”” Emily continued looking where he left off. She had learned a lot about all of the gangs that she might have run into while working for the CIA, though she definitely would never be able to go undercover with MS13. Some of her undercover aliases had run-ins with the infamous gang, though so it was a good thing that she had studied them as much as she had. 

“There are persistent rumors about the MS13’s involvement as hitmen for hire, and some gang experts say the gang actively markets this service to other criminal organizations. In addition, the high number of homicides that occur in gang-controlled areas or that are connected to gangs give these claims an air of credibility. However, we have no conclusive evidence of the MS13’s involvement in using its personnel on a regular or systematic basis for this service. What’s more, the MS13 is poorly trained and more easily recognizable by witnesses. While they have been moving away from face tattoos since 2007, many of them still have the tattoos, and even if they don’t have the tattoos on their face, most of them still have Mara Salvatrucha or MS13 tattooed somewhere on their bodies.” Sam finished. 

“So you think that our killer is one of those hitmen?” Mick asked, returning with cups of coffee that he passed around to the team. He handed Emily hers along with a few packets of creamer and sugar, and she noticed that her cup was the only one that hadn’t been pre-doctored. She repressed a grin- her entire team knew everyone else’s coffee preferences too. 

“Yes. There is no hesitation whatsoever in all of the killings that we know about. That shows a familiarity with death that goes beyond a few drive by shootings. This guy likes to get his hands dirty. And now he’s doing it for fun.” Coop said grimly. 

* * *

When the plane landed, they all went straight to the police station to meet the detective who had broken the case, James Wells. He didn’t have anything new to tell them, so they all dispersed off to their various assignments. Beth went with Wells to go look at one crime scene while Prophet and Gina went to another. That left her with Cooper and Mick, staring at the whiteboards filled with pictures of the victims.

“Ok, I need to go meet up with a few friends and contacts.” Emily told Cooper. “I’ve already told them that I’m in town, so barring something big happening, they should be waiting for me.”

“Alone?” he said dubiously.

She frowned “If you don’t want me to go alone, it’s going to have to be either you or Mick that goes with me, cause I think you two have the highest security clearances of your team, right?” 

“Yes, but will they have a problem with him being former British military?” 

“Not if he’s with me, and I make sure he can’t figure out how to get there on his own. The building has very tight security, the only reason I know where it is is because I've known the person in charge of it for a very long time, and saved their life before.” she told them, sweeping a stray hair out of her face. 

“Then go with Rawson, and be careful.” Coop told her. “Call me if you find anything.” 

“I will.” she said, turning to walk out the door, with Mick following her. Emily led him out to one of the SUVs. She opened the trunk first and pulled a scarf out of her suitcase. “Here.” she said, handing it to him. “Tie it so that it covers your eyes and you can’t see out.”

“How classified is this place?” he said incredulously, walking over to the passenger side and getting in before tying the scarf over his eyes.

“Very.” Emily said grimly “I think I’m the one of the only FBI agents to actually know where it is. I was in fact the first person to step foot in the building that wasn’t from that agency. You will be the second. Classified is an understatement.” 

“Wow.” Mick said, as she got into the car. 

“I should warn you that we are taking the very long circling route so don’t even try to count the turns.” Emily said, starting the car and pulling away from the police station. “They are trusting me a lot by letting someone else come with me. The people who work there deal with threats to national security on a daily basis. They’ve already had to switch bases once in the past year, they don’t need to do so again.” 

“I’m fine with that.” Mick shrugged, and leaned back in his seat fully prepared to relax until the long trip was over. 

After about 45 minutes of driving, with many circles and detours, they finally arrived at Ops. Emily was impressed that it hadn’t taken them longer- LA was not exactly famous for it’s good traffic. Emily pulled up outside the old water plant building, which still had all of it’s condemned signs, and spoke up “Okay, you can take that scarf off now.” 

Mick took the scarf off and blinked a few times in the bright sunlight. “Is this it?” he asked, looking suspiciously at the decaying building.

“Yep. It’s only condemned on the outside. Come on.” Emily grinned, opening her door and getting out. She was realizing why Sam had been grinning so much when he had shown Ops to her and Callen back in October. This really was a lot of fun.

“What even is this place?”

“Welcome to the NCIS’ La Operations building.” 

“What.” Rawson sputtered, looking around at the building. “How is this even a governmental building?” 

“Because it’s an office filled with undercover specialists.” Emily smirked. “And they like seeing people’s faces when they come here for the first time. Although we are the only outside agents who have even been here, so they only really get their entertainment from other NCIS agents” 

Just then the door opened and Callen stepped out. “Emily” he smiled, and hugged her. “How are you.”

“Well, better then that one time in-”

“Don’t even think about referring to that. Hetty hates all mention of that incident.” He lowered his voice and stepped closer. “And she’s probably listening.”

“I heard that Mr. Callen.” Hetty’s voice rang out over some kind of intercom system.”

Mick jumped, but Callen and Emily were used to Hetty’s theatrics and didn’t even twitch. “So, you said that there was something going on?” he said as he led them through the door and into the building. 

“Yeah, we might have a hit man running around and playing serial killer.” Emily told him, as they walked into the main room. “Is that really a palm tree covered in Christmas lights?” 

“What, it’s Los Angeles.” G tried to defend them, and Emily just rolled her eyes. 

“But a palm tree, G?” 

“You aren’t accepting the spirit of Christmas Emily.” Sam snarked at them, appearing from out of the area where the team worked. Emily noticed that it now had desks, and looked a lot more organized and professional then the old dining room table that they previously had did. “Besides, my daughter is allergic to pine.”

“You could have gotten a plastic tree.” Hetty pointed out. “I know you have a plastic one at your house. So why did you get that.” she waved her hand at the palm tree. 

“Macy got it, years ago. She thought it was funny, so we kept watering it, and now we have a Christmas palm tree.” Kensi told her. 

Hetty frowned, but must have decided to let it go, as she turned to Mick and stuck her hand out. “Agent Rawson. I’m Operations Manager Hetty Lange. Welcome to NCIS’ La Ops team. That there, is G Callen, who you met on the way in. Next to him is his partner, Agent Sam Hanna, and next to them is Kensi Byle. We also have a few other agents who are upstairs watching over an operation that the Marines are doing in- well, that’s probably classified.” 

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. And thank you for agreeing to help us.”

Hetty flapped a hand dismissively “If you can get him off our streets, then there is one less problem that we have to deal with when he eventually kills a military member or does something that would compromise national security. 

“Thank you, anyway.” Mick smiled. “As much as I like not being in cold DC, I want to catch this guy before he kills again, and you are helping.”

“Speaking of our help, who do you want to talk to?” Sam asked.

“Um, I don’t know your sources well. Anyone you think could help, really.” Emily frowned 

“There might be a few people who know something. Are you going to go visit Arkady?” Callen asked.

“Yeah, probably. It might not be his usual area, but he probably knows something.” Emily said. “Does Alina still work for him?” 

“No, she only worked for him because she wanted to help me. Now that she knows that I am ok, she quit working for him.” Callen said. “Which is good, because she wouldn’t be able to deal with the messes that Arkady gets himself into, anyway. She went back to her usual job- a tour guide for a European tourist company. She likes it, she gets to see a lot of the city and live here, and gets to speak Russian, along with a few other languages she knows, on a daily basis.”

“That’s good, it definitely seems like more of the job she should have instead of what she was doing.” Emily smiled. 

“Anyone else you want to talk to?” Callen asked

“Anyone who might be willing to talk to us. What about that drug dealer, what was it, JJ?” Emily suggested.

“Ok, that can be done. Arkady first, then JJ, then a few others that might know something?” 

“Sure.” Emily grinned.   
  
“We’ll need to stop at that bakery first, though. The last time I went to talk to him, I didn’t bring pastries, and he complained about it. A lot. I almost think I’m bribing him with food to give me intel.” 

Emily laughed “Well, if it gets intel, sure.” 

“Pastries?” Mick asked.

“Arkady is an ex-KGB agent. He knows where all of the bodies are buried; probably because he is the one who buried them. And given that at least half the time we arrest someone off of his intel, we’ve arrested a competitor of his, he is more then willing to give us the information. And if giving him food makes him more likely to tell us something, then we’ll do it.” Callen told him.

“A Russian spy. And you actually trust this man?” Mick asked. 

“To an extent, yes.” Emily nodded. 

“Wow. When you said you had CI’s, I didn’t think they would be Russian spies.” Mick said.

“Yeah, Arkady’s kinda weird, but he likes helping out if we pretend to bribe him.” Sam snorted. “I need to get back to that operation, so I’ll see you guys later.” he waved, then trotted up the stairs, entering Eric’s domain. 

“Ok, so let’s go.” G said, leading them back towards the door. “We can take my car as Arkady’s people know it, and it doesn’t look like an FBI car.” 

“Yeah, how did you even get your car, G? It doesn’t look like anything that the government would buy for an agent.”

“Oh, I might have liberated it off of a drug lord who might have been shooting it at me to make my escape. He couldn’t exactly report it missing, cause his entire place was covered in blood and bullet holes, and I didn’t exactly want to give it back, so I just drove it to ops. I got the blood cleaned out, bullet holes repaired, and switched a couple numbers in the places that would prove it was his, and then I magically had a new car. It works really well when I’m trying to play a high roller.” G smirked as he led them over to the gleaming Jaguar. 

“I wish I got paid to drive cars like that.” Mick said, giving it an impressed once over.

“Oh trust me, I spend enough time pretending to be homeless or in other awful situations to make up for it. Getting to pretend to be someone rich is a rarity.” G winced. “And of course when I get to be someone rich, then of course the stakes are really high and lots of people will die if I don’t succeed, which means it isn’t exactly relaxing. 

After the long drive, they pulled up at the large mansion. “Rawson, you can take the scarf off.” G said as he pulled up to the gates. “I’m Callen, can you tell Arkady that I need to speak with him?” he asked the man standing near the gates. The man nodded, the gates opened, and they went up the long drive to the house.

“Damn.” Mick said, peering out the tiny back window to see the property. “What does this guy do? Cause I definitely don’t earn this much.”

“That is a question I have deliberately not asked.” G smirked “Nothing legal, that’s for sure.” 

“Yeah, not legal is probably an understatement.” Emily winced as she got out of the car and slid the seat forwards so he could get out. 

“Then I really don’t want to know.” Mick said, clambering out. “Do you want me to give you the box from the bakery? Cause if I was this guy I wouldn’t trust the food that was held by a stranger.” 

“Yeah, that probably a good idea.” Emily told him as he leaned into the backseat to grab the box. She turned around at the sound of the door creaking open.

“Emily, Callen, and who is this?” Arkady asked as he appeared on the staircase above them.

“This is Mick Rawson, of the BAU Red Cell team.” Emily smiled as she held the box of pastries out as he came down the stairs to meet them. “Rawson, this is Arkady Kolcheck.” 

“You brought other FBI agents to my door, Emily?” Arkady said, sounding disapproving, but he took the box from her anyway.

“We went from the police station to a meeting place, then from the meeting place to the bakery, and then from the bakery here. He was blindfolded the entire time, and we purposely made our route very confusing. There is no way he would be able to find his way here. He only took the blindfold off when we arrived here.” Emily said. “I’ve worked with him before, he’s trustworthy.” 

Arkady just gave her a look like ‘this better not blow up in my face, Emily’ but she could see him mentally decide to put the whole issue aside and see why they came here “What is it you need?” he asked

“There is a serial killer on the streets of LA.” Emily told him. “We believe he is an MS13 hitman who devolved to the point that he doesn’t care who he kills. All he cares about is his next kill and how slow and bloody he can make it. Anyone could be his next victim.”

“I’ll ask around.” Arkady nodded, “A hitman off his leash will kill whoever he feels like.”

“Thanks, Arkady.” Emily smiled. 

“Yeah. Now get out of here before someone sees you and thinks I’m working with the feds.” 

“You are working with the feds Arkady.” Emily grinned as she opened the car door for Mick to squeeze himself back into the backseat of Callen’s car, which Emily swore was made for 5 year olds. Then again, Emily supposed that Callen didn’t have anyone other then Sam in the car very often.

“Bah, don’t remind me.” Arkady scoffed, and went back up the steps. He was gone by the time that Emily managed to swing into the car. The second that she had the door closed, Callen started it, and they purred out the gates, the guard glaring at them as they passed. 

* * *

  
  


“That’s JJ?” Mick said, sounding incredulous as they watched the man from a vantage point while sitting in the car.

“That would be JJ. He’s one of a kind.” Callen said, looking down at the man dressed in a tiger suit. 

“Ok, so you are the one with the CI. How do you want to do this?” Emily asked. 

“Well, he’s a runner if he thinks he can get away with it, so we need to have a two pronged attack. With where he is, it will act as a funnel, so we can have one person come from one side, and two from the other, and he probably won’t get past us.” Callen said. 

“So if you approach, will he see you are run straight into Emily and I?” Mick asked. 

“Yeah, that would work.” Callen nodded. “I’ll stay out of sight and give you ten minutes to get into position, then I’ll start moving in.” 

“Got it.” Emily nodded, and they split up.

“Ok, so what do you think I should do exactly?” Mick asked.

“I would say pretend we don’t know each other, one person follows a few feet behind and to the side or something, that will make us look like we don’t know each other, so JJ will be surprised when we grab him. Our only problem will be the amount of civilians that are in the area.” Emily frowned and swept a stray strand of hair out of her face. 

“You would be surprised how quickly people can get out of the area when there's a guy being chased by a bunch of people yelling federal agents behind them.” Mick grinned.

“Yeah, that is true.” Emily grinned. She then started snickering as they got closer to JJ, and the horrors of his costume were revealed. “Look at the teeth on that costume! They look like they are going to gouge his eyeballs out!”

“I’m pretty sure that not even a real tiger has teeth that big. And even if they do, they don’t look like curved little toothpicks.” Mick snickered back.

Emily snorted once, then schooled her face back into a neutral as they got closer to JJ, taking two fast steps to put herself just in front of Mick, then wandering slightly to the side. To most people, they would look like they didn’t even know each other. Those who could read people though would notice that Mick was doing constant sweeps, making sure to keep her and Callen, who they could see sneaking up behind JJ, in his line of sight, while also looking for other hostiles. Emily was doing the same thing, except a bit more discreetly, and she couldn’t get Mick into her line of sight without gawking over her shoulder like some overly lost tourist, so she settled for listening for his footsteps. She couldn’t really blame him for his twitchiness, the location that JJ was at was like a sniper’s hell- surrounded by buildings with good lines of sight or small landscaped hills that an amateur could make a shot from. But JJ wasn’t really worth killing for most criminals in the city, as he was just a minor annoyance, so they should be fine. 

Emily watched as JJ continued harassing tourists with t-shirts and slowed her walk to an amble to give Callen a few more seconds of time to get into position, but JJ turned around to get something out of his suitcase of shirts and noticed him, immediately sprinting off in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for him, he ran straight towards her, and Emily reached out and grabbed his arm with ease, Mick grabbed the other, and with a flash of their badges to the startled civilians, they dragged him back to where Callen was poking through the suitcase.

“Well, JJ what do we have here?” Callen said, sounding overly cheerful.

“Man, I think these two broke my shoulders.”

“I said don’t run, and what did you do? Ran. Like every single other time we have had to come and talk to you. So don’t run. Or the next time I’ll have Sam tackle you. I’m sure that will hurt a lot.” Callen said, still in that overly cheerful voice. 

“Oh, come on man.” JJ groaned, struggling a little, but he didn’t even come close to breaking Emily’s grip. 

“Well, unfortunately for you,” Callen smirked and held up a plastic bag filled with mini bags, which all had weed in them “You have this. And this is definitely possession with intent to distribute. And that is some serious jail time.” 

“That’s what, 2 to 5 years in jail? And the lawyer’s fees, other assorted fees, and the fact that you can’t make money in those years, well that would really suck JJ” Emily smirked down at him. 

“So, you are going to tell us anything you hear about a rogue Ms13 hitman or we put you in jail.” Callen purred, looking very dangerous all of a sudden. 

“And I will make sure that it is the worst possible jail that I can get you in. It’s too bad there are no federal prisons in Alaska, that would really suck for someone who is used to living in LA.” 

“I don’t know anything about MS13, I’m not stupid, they would kill me!” the terrified man babbled, looking in between Callen and Mick, who were both looking at him like how a hungry cat looks at a mouse. 

“JJ, you listen to every bit of gossip you can find, because you want to know where the trouble is, so you can avoid it. Don’t try and tell me that you don’t know anything.” Callen rolled his eyes, and Emily only barely hid her smirk. 

“Ok, ok, I’ll tell you.” JJ said, fidgeting with the zipper on the tiger suit.

“And?” Mick growled. Emily was impressed- he certainly sounded like he was two seconds away from murder. Though, with how annoying JJ was, she couldn’t definitively say that he wasn’t.

“All I know is that his name is one of those ones that his first name and last name are the same letter. It’s F. F. I don’t know anything other then that, you gotta believe me!”   
  


“If I hear of you selling anything that could be remotely considered illegal, I will revisit that prison in a very cold place option. Understood?” Callen said. 

“Yes, I got it.” JJ sighed. 

“And I’m taking this.” Callen wiggled the bag, then walked away. Emily released JJ and followed, with Mick one step behind her. “Is that everyone?” G asked once they had gotten far enough away that JJ couldn’t overhear them.

“Yeah, probably. With the initials, whatever Arkady comes up with, and Garcia’s magic, we’ll probably have him. Thanks G.” Emily said. 

“Anytime. You are getting this guy off my streets before I have to deal with him.” G shrugged. They headed back to the cars, and split up, G headed back to Ops, while Emily and Mick went to the police station to wait from Arkady to call. 

* * *

They didn’t get a call that night, and after they had finished reviewing the victims, and going through them to see if they could find any similarities between the victims. Unfortunately, there was nothing to find, just normal people going about their normal lives. 

Once it got late, they went to the hotel for the night, as there was nothing else that they could do, and it was better then not getting any sleep and crashing the next day when they needed to be awake. The hotel was the normal BAU standard- cheap but not too cheap, as close to the police station as possible, and often in the very area they were trying to find the unsub. Whoever had decided that a group of FBI agents should stay near the unsub's comfort zone should be shot, Emily thought. A lot of unsubs would research who was trying to catch them. And that sometimes included electronic or real life stalking. The last thing that they would need is for an unsub to discover that the agents that were trying to catch them were staying so close to them. That was just a recipe for disaster. Nothing had happened- yet. And yet was the key word here, Emily would be willing to put money on that it would happen someday. She just really didn't want to be there when it did.

Fortunately, Coop seemed to have a bit more control over the bureaucratic mess that was the FBI, as he managed to get them put in a hotel that was close, but not too close to the comfort zone. Close enough that they could get there quickly in an emergency, but not close enough that the unsub would consider them potential targets.

The hotel rooms themselves were also the normal set up for FBI agents. Of course, most hotels that Emily had been in were, but there were even more similarities. The first thing was that Beth and Gina shared a room, just like how Emily had so often shared a room with JJ. Emily had a room to herself, as she was the non team member and a woman, but her room connected to Gina and Beth's for the safety of it. Mick was sharing a room with Prophet, and Sam got a room to himself as team leader, though their rooms were also connected. All of that was fairly standard for her, as her team was fairly similar- Morgan and Reid roomed together, as did Hotch and Rossi.

After they had deposited their things in their room, the group met in the lobby to go find some dinner to eat. They had gotten lunch after they had gotten off the plane, but that was a long time ago, and Emily was starving.

"Hey Emily, you know LA decently well, right?" Sam asked "Are there any good restaurants near here?"

"There's a really good Chinese place about 15 minutes away, I think. Other then that, I don't really know, I'm not usually in this area when I am in LA."

"Everyone good with Chinese?" Sam checked, and after getting a bunch of nods, he led the way to the cars.

Dinner with Coop's team was a lot like dinner with her own team- they didn't talk about their own case, but instead talked about other cases and incidents that had happened, other serial killers that they had caught and interviewed. It was fun, Emily thought, talking to people who knew criminal profiling like she did, but she didn't know as well as the back of her own hand. Emily was considering starting up a monthly multi team dinner- the BAU teams, Coop’s red Cell, and the IRT, as they were also all profilers, except for their ME, and she also had profiler training. If there were the full six teams (four Bau, plus the other two) then they were guaranteed to have teams that would actually make it. With that many people, it would have to be a cookout in a park or something. Still, it was something to consider, and maybe pitch to Garcia. If she couldn’t make it happen, nobody could. After dinner, they went back to the hotel, and Emily took a shower, then immediately collapsed into bed. Thanks to the time change and the jet lag, she was exhausted. 

  
  


She really should have expected the midnight phone call. “Emily?” Sam asked. 

“Yeah, I’m awake.” Emily mumbled into the phone. “He killed again?” 

“Unfortunately, yes. We’re meeting downstairs in 20 minutes.” he told her. 

Emily was instantly glad that she had taken the time to braid her hair before she fell asleep, and all she had to do was comb it out, and it fell in soft waves around her head, looking as if she had curled it. After changing into the clothes that she had set out, she grabbed her phone and messenger bag, and went downstairs. 

Mick was the only one there, which didn’t really surprise her as she managed to get out the door in 10 minutes. “Wow, you were fast.” he said as she sat down on the couch next to him. 

“I’ve gotten used to really early morning wake up calls.” Emily winced. “Somehow, waking up at three am has never gotten easier.” she pulled her makeup out of her bag and proceeded to put it on.

“You can say that again.” Mick grumbled, yawning. “And the worst thing is there aren't any coffee shops open, and I learned not to trust hotel coffee a long time ago. Ok, can I ask a slightly weird question?” 

“Sure, but I might decline to answer it.” Emily told him.

“How do you do that without a mirror?” he asked as she swiped mascara on.

“Muscle memory, and practice.” Emily said, “And a lot of failure.” 

“I couldn’t jab near my eye with that, I’d flinch away.” 

“I used to, when I was a kid. I sometimes still do, if someone else is putting makeup on me. It’s easier then you think, once you get used to it.” She grinned as the elevator dinged, and she glanced up to see the rest of the team. “Hey everyone.” 

“Morning.” Gina yawned. 

“Is it really?” Prophet grumbled, but Emily noticed he looked more alert then anyone else. Gina looked the most tired, and everyone else fell somewhere in between the two. Emily was pretty sure that she was only slightly less tired then Gina looked. 

“Why do serial killers kill in the middle of the night?” Beth groaned.

“Because they don’t get caught as easily.” Sam said, sounding like it was something that he had said a million times before, and he probably had. “Everyone ready?” he asked, just as Emily finished shoving the last of her makeup stuff into her bag. Mick stood up and stretched, and Emily watched as just a sliver of skin above his jeans appeared.

“I’m good.” She said, taking Mick’s hand as he pulled her off the very comfortable couch that she would love to do nothing more then take a very long nap on. She definitely needed more sleep if she was noticing things like that about coworkers. Even really hot coworkers with gorgeous british accents. Gahh, she thought, stupid brain shut up.

“Then let’s go.” Coop said, and without further ado, they got into the SUV’s and left.

* * *

Emily knew the scene would be bad when they pulled up and she could see an officer barfing into a neighbor's bushes. The green faces of all of the rest of them told her that it wasn't just one rookie officer. She braced herself for what she was about to see, but no matter how much she tried to prepare herself, there were always scenes that got to her, like the trailer of the sheriff’s deputy in Texas.

The scene was horrid. There was blood everywhere. Even she felt like barfing from the minute she walked into the house. The entire room smelled like copper, and there was blood on every surface.

"Who are they?" Emily asked, running her eyes over the scene. It was horrible- there were three kids tied together, on a couch that they two kids on the outside were also tied two. The two parents were both tied to heavy armchairs, ones that would take a lot of effort to move, especially tied up. However, Emily could see drag marks in the carpet showing that they had moved. From that and the blood spatter pattern, Emily realized that the kids had been tortured first. From the bloodstains, likely youngest to oldest, before the unsub moved on to mom, and the dad last.

"The Moon family. By all accounts, normal happy people. No enemies, no loud arguments. nothing out of the ordinary, and definitely not anyone who could be tied into gang activity." Detective Wells told them. He looked exhausted, Emily noted. Like he didn’t even bother with trying to sleep. Emily didn’t blame him- if she was a cop and this was happening on her patrol, she probably wouldn’t either. She just hoped he got some sleep soon, before he collapsed. 

"Who called it in?" Cooper asked hoarsely.

“Neighbor, she noticed that the lights had been on all night when she got up for some water and went over to make sure that everything was all right. The Moon’s weren't known for staying up all night, so she was concerned. She knocked without an answer so she went around to pear into a window, and saw the blood. She called 911, and was hysterical, the dispatcher had no idea what she was talking about. All she was saying was blood. The responding officers got here and immediately called me. We had to call an ambulance for her, she's at the hospital being treated for shock." Detective Wells told them "I came and saw this, and knew it had to be our killer. Otherwise s normal scene for him, except I think he decided it would be more terrifying for the others if he played with their blood. That's why it smells so much like copper in here.” 

"This is the first time he's killed more then one person at a time, at least in this killing spree." Prophet said.

"And the first time he's killed kids."

“I wonder what set him off? He's never shown this level of depravity before. Yes, he tortured, but he didn't play with the blood. The MO is still the same, knife then bullet, but how he positioned them is telling." Mick said.

"He wanted the others to watch. He wanted an audience." Gina said hoarsely, looking just as green as the officers outside.

"And he enjoyed it." Sam said.

* * *

  
  


“I wonder what the unsub did first, the stabbing or the shooting? What his first kill was, I mean” Emily frowned at the whiteboard covered with far too many faces. 

“Shooting, probably. He probably started out as an ordinary gang member until the leaders discovered how good he was at killing.” Propet speculated. “Gang members, when they first join, don't instantly become cold blooded killers when they join the gang. They are human after all, with normal human reactions. Which is what made this guy stand out.”

“The leaders noticed him, and he probably got promoted through the ranks fairly quickly.” Beth nodded. 

“So, he became a hitman, and used a knife, because even if it is messier, it’s quieter then a gun, even with the best silencer in the world.” Mick nodded. 

“And at some point he discovered he liked drawing the kills out, watching him suffer. And whatever hits he was doing weren’t enough. So he started killing others. Random people he saw on the street. That’s why we can’t find a pattern between them.” Coop said, gesturing at the wall of pictures of the unsubs victims. 

“So he stabs them, drawing it out, then probably stands over them with the gun pointed at their heads, listening to them beg for their lives and seeing the fear in their eyes before he pulls the trigger.” Emily finished grimly.

“He will keep killing and killing until he’s caught- by now it’s all he thinks about, and when he’s not killing he just relives the kills over and over.” Gina said, then frowned “What happens when his gang realizes that he’s the serial killer.”

“Well, I’d guess that the corredor never truly trusted him. He probably had to kill a fellow gang member at some point and was just as cold blooded as normal. That’s when the corredor really took notice- even a hitman would have a reaction to killing someone he knew, even if he didn’t like them. But the unsub showed nothing.” Emily frowned.

“And the rest of the clicas is probably afraid of him- even if he looks normal, they would have seen enough of his kills to know that is not true.” Mick added

“The corredor will want him dead, but all of the gang members will be too terrified to try.” Beth mused.

“Which means it’s going to end very badly unless we catch him soon.” Sam said, glancing around the room at all of them. “So let’s keep working on this. What are your estimates on what age he is?” 

Things progressed like that for a few hours, slowly putting the puzzle pieces of their unsub together. The final piece came when Callen called. 

Emily glanced up, startled from the paper she had been staring at for the last few hours. The ringing phone continued, and she picked up the call. “Prentiss.” She said, glancing back over the victim backgrounds that she had been looking at. 

“Hey, it’s Callen.” G said. “So I called Arkady, and told him what JJ had said, warned him to take it with a grain of salt if not more then a few, and he just called me with an answer.”

“Give me a second and I’ll put you on speaker.” Emily said “Everyone, I might have something.” She said, connecting her phone to the speaker so that everyone would be able to hear clearly. She waited for everyone to gather around the table, then said “G, go ahead.”

“So, my CI called me, and knowing that the killer had the initials FF, he was able to narrow it down to one man. A MS13 hit man, with everything that Emily had described- the coldness, the fear that even his own gang has of him. His name is Fernando Flores. Arkady’s still trying to figure out where he might be. Unfortunately, according to Arkady, he’s never been arrested, so we don’t have any pictures of him. Eric’s trying to figure out what he might drive so he can put it in Kaleidoscope. Other then the name, no new information. I’ll call you when Arkady finds something else.” Callen said, then hung up. 

Emily immediately picked her phone up and dialed Garcia. “This is your goddess of all things technical, what nay I do for you today?” 

“Hey Garcia, what can you tell me about a man named Fernando Flores?” 

“Fernando Flores, two rather common names. Lets see. There are 125 Fernando Flores’ in the US, if we limit that to the LA area, we have 5, two of which are related.” 

“Limit the age to somewhere between 30 and 40. This man is experienced, but he’s young enough to still be able to kill as violently as he does.” Sam said.

“Two hits.” Garcia told them. 

“Have either of them been in jail?” 

“No, they have not. They both live in apartments in the comfort zone, both have minimum wage jobs- one is a mechanic and the other is a janitor, both have never been married, and both don’t seem to have any social media accounts.” Garcia told them. “Oh, and the most shocking, neither of them has a driver's license. How can you be a mechanic without a driver’s license?

“It’s not like we can walk up to them and go ‘are you a killer.’ We’d promptly get shot by the killer.” Beth sighed. 

“Fear not, I will dig more and see what I uncover!” Garcia said, and hung up. 

“Ok,” Sam said, looking around the room. “Gina and Prophet- Mr. Moon’s father is coming to talk to you in 15 minutes. Beth, you and I are going to go walk whatever scenes that can still be seen, so we can see if there is a difference between the two- this mornings, and the previous. Pictures don’t show enough.” He grumbled. “Mick and Emily, Stay here and work over the profile, wait for more information from your sources.” 

“Ok.” Mick said, shifting his focus back to the file in front of him.

“Got it boss. Anything you want us to ask about in particular?” Gina asked, and they all started moving out the door. Emily wasn’t able to hear the rest of the conversation, but she could guess at what was being said.

“16” Emily said, leaning back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling.

"What?" Mick asked.

“16 people. He has killed 16 people on this spree. How many others are on that list that we just don't know about? 50? 100? 150? 200? Why did he snap after what was likely over a hundred kills? What changed, why aren't gang kills enough for him now?" Emily said, frowning, her eyes lingering on the pictures of the children that had been added to the murder board. 

"Maybe it's like we speculated, that the gang leader is getting suspicious, and he stopped him from killing. But it's like a drug now, he has to do it, so he finds someone else to kill. And he's used to killing people, hw has no morality, so he doesn't care who he attacks, so he's fine with killing whoever catches his interest.

"In the case that my team had, the two men killing families, they did it when they saw the families arguing and unsub 1 just wanted to hurt the families and steal things, but the other unsub gave the kids a painless death, so they didn't have to suffer. This unsub doesn't care about kids at all. Most unsubs we have tackled usually have one thing they won't do. For most, it's kids, for some it's women, some it people who remind them of the few good people that were in their lives. This man. This killer has nothing. He's attacked families, he's attacked elderly people, he's attacked women. He has no morals, nothing that stops him.What happened to him that made him like this? Why is he so uncaring? Is there violent crime in his past, an orphan who grew up in the foster care system so he was used to not having anyone? In his past, we'll find something that caused him to be the way that he is."

"There are some," Mick started, stretching, "That are just killers from birth, who just don't care. There was this one guy who tried to get into sniper training at the same time I was, I remember meeting him and his eyes, they creeped me out, they were so cold and terrifying. Well, sniper training has harder psych evals then any of the basic ones that you had to do up until that point, and so he had to go into them, and thank god that he failed, them because someone as insane as him should not have ever been trained on how to snipe, that would of been horrifying. But the thing is, the people in charge of the unit looked into his past, deep, and they found nothing. This kid wasn't bullied, wasn't abused, didn't have a parent die. There was nothing in his past that could have caused him to be the way he was. Sometimes people are just born like that. Didn't your team have a case with a child killer, who killed his brother? There wasn't anything in his past that could have caused him to be like that, I know your team looked. Happy family life, just somehow because like that. Sometimes you can't find a reason, Emily. We don't know everything yet.” 

* * *

The day sped by, first Prophet and Gina coming back from their interview with nothing new, then Sam and Beth with the same. So they all dug in and argued over the tiniest bits of the profile until they were all yawning. Without anything else to focus on, they went back to the hotel to get whatever bit of sleep that they could. 

Unfortunately for Emily, sleep did not come easily. She managed to fall asleep, but a little over four hours later, she woke up and was unable to fall asleep again. After trying and failing to fall back asleep for a while, she just gave up, and got ready for the day. Instead of staying in her room, she decided to go down to the lobby and read the book that she had brought with her for the plane rides. Normally, she would work on the case, but there was nothing to work on- they had exhausted all leads the night before, and until Garcia or Callen called with anything else, they didn’t really have anything to work on. It was the part she hated the most about cases, when they had nothing to do, and the cops who had called them out looked at them like they were miracle workers. Then they ran out of leads, ran out of things the cops hadn’t checked yet, ran out of things that the cops had checked, and faces starting falling when they told them that there was nothing that they could do until the next body or lead popped up. They couldn’t just snap their fingers and make a killer appear in front of them, of course. They just knew things that the cops didn’t, spent all of their time studying killers, and while that helped most of the time, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes they failed. The BAU didn’t have a perfect 100% case record. No unit did, there would always be cold cases that haunted them, cases that they hadn’t solved. Hell, Rossi had come back because of a cold case that haunted him, and while he managed to solve it, there were others that he hadn’t managed to close yet, and others that he never would. 

She had managed to get through an entire chapter of the book before she heard the elevator ding. She glanced up to see Mick walking out, looking exhausted. “Hey.” she said, and his head popped up, startled. 

“Morning.” he said. “Why are you up?” 

“Couldn’t sleep.” she said as he came over and sat on the couch next to her. “You?” 

“The same. At least it’s close to the normal time that I’d wake up.” he checked the watch on his wrist, “And the free breakfast opens in an hour.” 

“Continental breakfast. I wonder how bad it’s going to be.” Emily scoffed, putting a bookmark in her book, as if he was in the mood to talk, she wasn’t going to keep reading, a) it was rude, and b) she had read the book far too many times and talking to him was far more entertaining.

“I'm going to say weak coffee, bad donuts, and cold eggs.” Mick grinned. 

“If we are lucky, they’ll have the instant waffle maker. Most of my team lives off of those things when we are at a hotel that has them. They taste good, and are guaranteed to be hot, even if they are way more calories then I want to think about.”

“There was this one case we had, I can’t even remember what state we were in, one of those chase the killer over what feels like the entire country cases, and we get up, ready to hit the road and figure out who the killer had killed this time, so we go downstairs to go grab the continental breakfast, before we rush though the next state, and all the hotel had was little tiny boxes of dry cereal. No milk for the cereal. No coffee. Needless to say we went through a drive thru. None of us felt like eating that, especially since they would only give one box a person, and I could probably eat three of the things.” He grinned. 

“The best food I’ve ever had on a case was one of the recent ones, actually, when we were in Alaska. The little inn that we stayed in was the only hotel in town, and there were only three bedrooms, which made things a little awkward, with all seven of us there. But the inn owner was an amazing cook. She said, well you are trying to find the killer in my town, the least I can do is feed you right. Unfortunately, she was one of the victims of the killer. She was an amazing woman though, and her son took over the inn.” She sighed, thinking about the nice woman who fell victim to the boy who was mad that her son had gone off to college without him.

“Poor woman.” he sighed. “It’s always worse when you’ve met the victim, even if it was only in passing. You can’t help but think about how you could have possibly saved them.” 

“Yeah.” Emily sighed. “Sheriff Ruiz and her deputies being killed was worse. I mean, we worked with them, and they were killed by one of their own.”

“The case in Texas that I heard about? The one where Morgan blew your eardrums out?” Mick questioned. 

“Yeah, Deputy Boyd killed immigrants, then the sheriff, then most of the deputies. And the department wasn’t large to begin with, only like 6 people, and there were only 2 deputies left alive when the case was over. We hung around as long as we could to help get them back on their feet. Unfortunately, Strauss got pissed about that, and we had to head back, or we would have stayed longer. Morgan stayed in contact with the deputy, though, and he says that the unit has managed to pull itself back together, one of the sheriffs from one of the nearby counties had temporarily promoted his second in command and came to help them out for a little while, until the deputy that Morgan had been talking to felt up to taking the job as Sheriff.”

“Those poor deputies.” Mick winced. “God, I can’t imagine how that feels. Yeah, I’ve lost some friends, but my entire team, at once?”

“We had a suicide watch on the deputies while we were there, and we talked the others that came in to help into continuing it. The reason the deputy that got the promotion, got the promotion was that the other deputy tried, fortunately they managed to stop him and get him to a hospital in time, or else it would have been bad.” 

Before Mick could say anything back, the workers started shuffling around, setting up the breakfast, clearly surprised to see anyone awake already. Considering that it was 5 am, Emily would be surprised too. They waited on the couch until it looked like everything was under control, then right as they were about to get up, the rest of the team came out of the elevator.

“There you guys are, we were wondering where you had gone.” Gina called. Emily got up, with Mick following, and went over to them.

“Couldn’t sleep.” Emily shrugged. 

“Urg, tell me about it. Even on the nights that I have enough time to get a full night’s sleep, I still don’t manage to do it.” Beth grumbled. Coop frowned and nodded, though he didn’t add on to the complaining. 

“Well, I hope you got enough sleep to survive on, I have a feeling we’re going to need it.” Prophet said darkly as they all headed towards the breakfast area. 

“Yeah, I got enough, and I’ve worked off of less. I’ll be fine.” She reassured him as most of the team headed straight for the coffee maker, with only Gina and Mick hanging back, checking out what foods they had while they waited for their turn at the machine. 

“Emily.” Mick called after she wrapped her hands around the Styrofoam cup. He pointed at the table and Emily laughed when she saw what he was pointing at. “Waffle maker.” he said, grinning.

“Awesome.” she said, heading straight for it. Gina raised an eyebrow at her as Mick moved forward to get his own cup. “We had a long conversation about how horrible continental breakfasts normally were at hotels. I mentioned waffle makers as normally the best or most consistent option.” 

“I know, I love them. I just remind myself that I can eat as many as I want without worrying as I stress myself out over catching serial killers all day.” Gina laughed. 

“I know.” Emily grinned as she pulled the hot waffle out of the maker and slid it onto a plate. “I have had too many days where I didn’t eat for hours because of a case to even think about denying myself this.” 

After the rest of the team had picked through what was offered, they all gathered at the table, discussing the other things that were happening in the Bureau, carefully keeping away from sensitive/ bloody subjects in deference to the workers and other guests that were slowly gathering in the room. When they were all finished, they went to the police station, concerned that they hadn’t gotten called out to a crime scene yet. This was the longest the killer had gone without killing since they had gotten the case. They didn’t get the call out until 2pm. 

* * *

The next scene was somehow even worse then the one before it. He hadn't killed a family in their home. He killed a party. A group of grandmas had gotten together to knit blankets for grandchildren. According to one's husband, after they had finished knitting enough for all of their grandchildren, they started knitting others for charities. The yarn was now all one color- red. Right beyond the door as they walked in, a woman laid on the ground, dead, and laying in a way that showed she was running for her life. She had been stabbed, then shot, but Emily guessed that forensics would say that she died from the stab wounds and not the bullet. The next body was in the kitchen, hiding under a table. She had been stabbed in the face, and then shot. A third body was on the ground between the living room and the hallway. From her position it was clear that she had gone down with a fight, trying to buy enough time for her friends to escape. She was the homeowner, and Emily was glad that her husband had opened the door, saw the blood and his wife's friend's body, and had immediately turned around and called 911. He didn't need to see this. The last body was the first one killed, a little old lady sitting in a chair, yarn and knitting needles still in her hands, but a terror filled expression on her face.

Gina made a noise, and Emily glanced over to see the revulsion on her face. She wasn't new enough to be gagging with the officers out in front of the house, but she was inexperienced enough that she hadn't learned how to hide the emotions on her face, and how to pretend she felt nothing. Emily had learned that a long time ago, and for Gina's sake, Emily hoped she would learn it quickly. Prophet had a supportive hand on her back, reminding her that she wasn't alone, and that seemed to be helping her, so Emily turned back to the crime scene.

"Was there any evidence of forced entry?" She asked.

"There was evidence that he used lockpicks on the back door." the detective told her.

"So, did he know that they were in here, and decided that they were his victims, or did he just choose a house at random?" Sam said.

"If he just chose a house at random, there are a lot of empty houses around here at this time of day '' Beth pointed out. It was the middle of the day, and most people were at work, kids were at school.

"You should check the nearby houses for lock pick marks. If it was random they will have that. If they were targeted, how did he know they were here? How did he find them? Why did he choose to kill so many people? Was it just to get a better high, or was it that he wanted more of a rush? It certainly is less effort than his previous kills- the children would have put up more of a fight then this group would. The parents would fight more for their children.” Mick said. 

“Add that together and it seems like de-escalation, and this killer doesn’t seem like the type. And that means-” Prophet said. 

“He’s going to kill again today.” Sam finished. 

  
  


An hour after they had left the scene, she finally got a call from Garcia. “Hello all.” she said, sounding tired. “After a lot of effort, I managed to pin down who your killer is. I looked at all of the cameras in the mechanics shop and the store the janitor works at, and camera watched until I narrowed the two Flores’ down. Then I used the cameras in the area to track them until they ditched the camera. I managed to get pictures of both of their faces, so I ran a maybe legal thing that you probably don’t want to know about, and tracked their locations on all of the cameras in the city that I could access. The Janitor isn’t your guy, it’s the mechanic. And I can tell you that he’s in a little corner store right now, and doesn’t look like he’s leaving soon. Go get him team, I’ll keep watching him until you have him in handcuffs.” Garcia yawned. 

“Thanks Garcia.” the team chorused, already grabbing their bulletproof vests. Coop was informing the detective what they knew, and before the minute was up, they were in their cars and speeding towards the address that Garcia had sent them, with copies of the security footage so they knew his face. 

* * *

“Hey Mick, how’s your tourist routine.” she said, frowning and looking at the shop down the street from them. The rest of the team frowned at her.

“Well, I’m Welsh and in America, so decent I guess.” he said, puzzled at where she was going with this.    
  
“Good.” She said, thankful she had on jeans instead of slacks, and a suit jacket over her favorite red t-shirt. She pulled off the jacket and tossed in the backseat of the car, and pulled out her purse. She ripped the lining open and pulled out a very small flask that she had hidden in it. “The best disguise is always going to be the drunk tourists.” she said, her accent shifting into a feminine version of Mick’s, barely resisting the urge to laugh when the entire team's jaws dropped. “The amount of places G and I have gotten into by pretending to be a drunk couple is outstanding. People don’t expect drunk people to behave rationally. It’s an amazing cover, and one that requires very little work. Although it would be awkward if they checked my driver’s license, so I have herby lost it.” She said, pulling it out of her wallet and putting it on the suit jacket. She took a sip from the flask, swishing it around in her mouth before swallowing, “It’s the littlest details that get you caught- acting drunk when you don’t smell like alcohol is one of them.” She spilled a little of the potent drink on her shirt, then smeared it like she tried to wipe it off and failed. “Though getting to drink on the job is a definite plus.” she offered the flask to Mick, but continued. “I can do this alone, but it’s easier if it’s two people.”

“I think I’ve been pub crawling enough times to know how to act when drunk.” He said, accepting the flask, then making a face when the taste of the stuff hit him. “This stuff is gross!” 

“Yeah, but it is also smelly, if you get close enough to someone that they can smell your breath, they can definitely smell it.” she said. 

“Do I need to spill it on my shirt too?” He asked, looking down at his leather jacket and the t-shirt he had underneath it. 

“No, that’s overkill, and don’t lose the jacket, it hides your gun. Just move the gun to your waistband, and stick the badge in the inner pocket of the jacket.” She told him, hiding her gun and badge in her purse, giving the thing a shake to make sure that nothing clinked against the metal.

“Do you usually do undercover ops with this little notice?” Gina asked.

“The short little 10-20 minute things? All the time. It’s often easier to go undercover then it is to announce yourself as a fed, and watch everyone run out the door. Long term? Usually not, though sometimes yes. It’s hard to fake all of the things needed for long term ops, like ids, and multiple years worth of tax records, and birth certificates, this quick, though I know a guy who can do all of that in about an hour.” she told them “Look, if you have questions, I will answer them all later, but now, we need to go in, before Fernando Flores leaves.” 

“And the odds of this going bad are?” 

“Well, there’s a very low chance of him recognizing me. If he does, play the bored thug/ boy toy. And follow my lead.”

“What name would he use?” 

“That’s a good question. All of them have similar reputations. Except for the one who dated Vladimir. She was kinda a pansy. But everyone knows that Vladimir doesn’t date anyone who doesn’t at least fall on the lethal scale, and several people died from poisonings in that time period. And if anyone touches her, they know that Vladimir will kill them slowly, broken up or not. So, no matter what, we should be safe. But no one in there should recognize us, they aren’t quite at that level of terrorist bastard. Any other questions?” 

“Do I use my actual name?” 

“Well, no one should know you, right?” Emily said.

“Yep.” Mick said. “I’m a sniper. I kill and disappear. If they know who you are, you’ve done something wrong.” 

“Then yes, cause you don’t have any backstopping or fake Ids.”

“Vladimir?” Gina asked.

“A spook, who has been undercover for a very long time. His girlfriends are all also spooks, from various agencies around the world. It was a very fun assignment- everyone winced whenever I looked at them. And Vladimir was very good at playing the fake boyfriend.”

“Fake boyfriend.” Mick repeated. He looked like he had been smacked in the face with a rake .

“Sometimes the lowest hanging fruit is the easiest to pick.” Emily smiled. “Besides, how else were they supposed to routinely get new operatives under to work with him and pass on intel to his handler? A revolving door of girlfriends was the easiest.” 

“That does sound like fun.” Gina grinned. 

“It was. Now, this will be very different. If we have to break cover and arrest people, there will be no problem with it, considering we don’t even have concrete aliases. But we really do need to hurry before Flores leaves. You all need to get into the cars and make sure that you aren’t too obviously watching. Mick and I will go around the block so we can approach it from the other direction, just to keep from being suspicious.” Emily said quickly mentally preparing herself for what she was about to do. “You ready?” she asked Mick.

“As ready as I’m going to get.” he sighed. “Let’s get this show on the road.” 

“Ok. And the distress signal will be…” she frowned and thought for a minute “Unicorn.”

“Unicorn?” Beth asked.

“It’s not something that comes up in conversation much while also being a normal word.” Emily grinned, then turned and started walking away “See you on the other side.” 

They walked down the street acting completely normal, then after they turned the corner, Emily pulled him into a corner store. It only took a few minutes for Emily to find the weakest bottle of alcohol in the store and buy it. A drunk couple walked out, and nobody noticed Emily pour most of the bottle into an empty plant potter.

They continued down the street, but now they were passing the bottle back and forth between each other, taking large swigs and laughing obnoxiously. Emily could see Mick picking up on her cues- she started weaving unsteadily, and he followed a half a second later. He wrapped his arm tighter around her shoulder as they stumbled towards the store. 

She tucked her head into his shoulder and giggled “That car is so obvious.” she hissed, glaring at the Jaguar that was idling a block away from them

“Yes, it is.” G said through the coms, and by the sounds on the other end, Mick's entire team was freaking out over the unexpected voice. “But I can outrun just about anything while driving it, and it’s less obvious then Sam’s Challenger. You can hear that thing coming from a block away!”

“Who are you?” Cooper barked.

“G. Callen. NCIS. And a friend of Emily’s who has gone undercover with her before. I will only move in if things go really bad. Otherwise, this is your operation. Pretend I’m not even here.” 

“Going in.” Mick hissed, half under his breath. Emily took one last scan of the street, then took a deep breath as Mick reached for the door of the store. It was showtime.

Emily giggled as they walked in the door, stumbling and practically hanging off of Mick. They immediately drew the frown of the man behind the counter. Mick was also doing a very good job of looking completely drunk, so they definitely didn’t look like anyone that someone would want in their business. “Hey dude, do you know where Hollywood Boulevard is? We’re kinda lost.” Emily pouted.

“We are not lost.” Mick immediately protested. 

“Babe, yes we are.” she slurred. She was thankful that it was such a tiny shop- that meant that she could tell that there was nobody else in the building- except for the three thugs slowly walking towards them- and their unsub leaning against a wall behind them. 

“No we aren’t.” Mick told her, making an exasperated face at the poor worker. 

“We totally are.” She said, turning towards him, which put her back to the approaching criminals, pretending she had no idea that they were there. She saw him tense up in response, and internally swore. This was the problem with untrained undercover operatives- they froze up when they were in situations that they were uncomfortable with. That’s not saying that Emily wasn’t uncomfortable, she just didn’t show it. She needed three more seconds of time for the goons to get in range, and had to make Mick look way less suspicious. There was one viable option. She reached up, her hand sliding up from where it was still on his arm to the back of his neck to drag his head down the few inches that she would need, and kissed him. Barely a brush of their lips but she could tell by the sound of the footfalls that the goons had gotten just close enough that they were in range. She didn’t have enough time to see Mick's reaction, and just spun around, going for the goon in her way, and with one punch had him unconscious and on the ground. She stepped over him, heading straight for the unsub, leaving Mick to deal with the other two, which from the sounds of it, he was doing without problems. She pulled her lipstick taser from out of her bra, and the second she got in range, used it. Flores dropped to the ground, twitching. She turned around to see that Mick had knocked one of the goons unconscious, and the other one had surrendered. He was in the process of cuffing all three of them. “Flores, you are under arrest.” she told the semiconscious hitman, leaning down to cuff him. She then removed a stupidly large amount of weapons from him, including a very large machete that was absolutely covered in dried blood. She stood up and used the lipstick end of the lipstick, smirking at the thought of how many morons had believed it was lipstick until she used it on them. She turned around to see Mick staring at her. “What?” she asked.

“Nothing.” he snorted. “Cooper, we are all clear in here. Four suspects in handcuffs and one store worker who we need to talk to. 

“Got it. On our way.” Cooper said, and within minutes the shop was filled with FBI agents. 

“What did you do to him?” Beth asked, looking down at the twitching serial killer. 

“Lipstick taser.” Emily said, showing her it. Unlike most lipstick tasers, this one actually looked like a stick of lipstick. Most commercial ‘lipstick tasers’ were overly bedazzled and had obvious triggers, which made them look nothing like a lipstick. Hers had been a gift from a friend who was in the CIA, so hers looked normal. “I wasn’t going to get anywhere near this guy, not with how much he likes knives. This little beauty has a range of 25 feet, so I could get him before he could get me, and the element of surprise meant that he wasn’t expecting it, so he couldn’t get his gun up in time.” she explained. 

“Nice.” Gina grinned, and Emily just smirked. With the amount of federal agents and cops in the tiny store, it was getting crowded, so she wandered outside once she was sure that each of the criminals had been taken into custody. 

“You know G the stalker thing is not a good look on you.” Emily glared at Callen, who was nonchalantly leaning against his car.

“Emily, what happened the last time you were undercover in the same city as I was and I wasn’t there to watch your back?” Emily winced- that op had a permanent place on the worst ops I have ever done list for a very good reason. “So I thought that it would be useful to have someone who knows you watching your back. And you handled it on your own, without problems. It will be if I wasn’t even here. And I would rather be here and not be needed then not be here when you need me again, Emily.” 

Emily sighed and ran her hand through her hair “I get it. But don’t make a habit, ok?” 

“Done.” He laughed. “Now, Hetty wants me back in ops. Talk to you soon?” 

“Yeah sure. If we actually manage to not be on cases at the same time before my next case in LA that is.” She laughed. He snorted, then leaned in to hug her.

“Next time, Emily.” he grinned, getting into his car. 

“Bye, G” She waved as he pulled away, then walked back to where the team was waiting. It may not be her team, but she thought they worked pretty well together on this case. It was definitely fun, having people she didn’t know like the back of her own hand to work with. If Coop ever wanted her on a case again, she would happily accept, especially if it meant getting away from a very bored Morgan and Reid. 

Sources-

[ http://www.lapdonline.org/la_gangs ](http://www.lapdonline.org/la_gangs)

[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13 ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-13)

[ https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1043576/download ](https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1043576/download)

[ https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs ](https://www.fbi.gov/about/faqs)

[ http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds_-_Season_5 ](http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Criminal_Minds_-_Season_5)

[ http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/NCIS:_Los_Angeles_-_Season_1 ](http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/NCIS:_Los_Angeles_-_Season_1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait everyone! This one took me longer to write then I thought it would, but it is really long, and then next chapter is already halfway written and should be up in the next week or two. The chapter after that is also already partially done, so regular updates ahead!


	6. The Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: major fluff ahead!

Chapter 6

“So I seem to remember promising to take you to dinner.” Mick said as they exited the plane.

Emily almost missed a step, and had to grab the handrail to keep her balance. “It’s two in the morning.” Emily told him dryly.

He paused, and it wasn’t until they were back on solid ground to respond “I’ll pick you up at seven tomorrow.” Mick grinned at her, then hopped on his motorcycle and disappeared before she could respond.    
  
“What the fuck just happened.” Emily sputtered. Prophet and Coop had gone down the stairs, and had both disappeared, but both Gina and Beth were standing next to her, smirking.

“I think you just got asked out.” Gina grinned.

“What, hasn’t his mooning over you been fairly obvious? I almost puked at the face that he made when you kissed him to prove the drunk impression. It was like you hit him with a board.” Beth said in her usually blunt way. 

“The only thing that kept him from grabbing you and dragging you into the nearest empty room was the fact that you were surrounded by angry Mexican gangsters.” Gina added.

“I am way too tired to deal with this.” Emily sighed and walked over to the car, ignoring the heckling going on behind her. She just hoped that neither of them told Garcia. That would suck.

* * *

  
  


The next day, she was off, which meant that she didn’t have to go into the office. Even if nobody had told Garcia, she could get information out of Emily better then anyone she had ever met. It was like she had a radar for when Emily was trying to hide things from her. So, her day went fairly normally- she got up, she worked out, she went to a bookstore to get something new to read on the plane. It was when 5 oclock hit that she knew she was screwed. 

The doorbell rang. Emily almost never had visitors, and other then possibly Mick, if he was actually being serious with his offer, she wasn’t expecting anyone. She sighed and pulled herself off the couch to go answer, sweeping a stray hair out of her face. One glance though the security window showed that it was going to be worse then she thought. She disabled the security system and opened the door.

“What are all of you doing here?” Emily groaned.

“What do you think I’m doing here.” Garcia demanded. Standing next to her, JJ grinned. Behind her, Gina looked like a younger version of JJ. It was only Beth who looked as reluctant as Emily felt. 

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Emily sighed. “I’m not going to be able to get rid of you am I?” 

“Were you really planning on wearing that?” Garcia sounded affronted. Emily looked down, seeing one of her oldest pairs of jeans and a t-shirt with a quote from MIB on it. "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers." was something that Emily definitely agreed with.

“Yes.” Emily said sarcastically, in the hopes that Garcia would give up and go away. It only made her more determined, and she pushed her way into the house, grabbing Emily’s wrist as she went past, dragging her down the hallway towards her room “JJ can you turn on the security system.” She called over her shoulder, unable to get Garcia off her. Well, she could, but it would involve several nerve pinches and possibly a punch. Which she didn’t want to do. Even if she was about to be tortured.

She was dragged into her bathroom, and shoving onto the edge of the tub. Emily obligingly sat, and waited. Garica just huffed, and turned around and went right back out. A few seconds later, Emily heard the creak of the doors of her closet opening, and she didn’t bother moving, she knew that Pen would just yell at her if she did. It was funny, she was more nervous of what Pen and the others might do to her then when she was getting tortured. Beth waked in and sat next to her, sighing.

“I assume you know that I was dragged into this just as much as you are.” She said, grimacing. 

“Yeah, I didn’t see you as the person who would go along with this.” Emily grinned. Beth was certainly not a girly girl. She wore makeup and fancy clothes, yes, but that was more of a mask that was used to support her against two things- her relatively small height, and to get people to actually respect her as an FBI agent. Not all unlike how Emily used the same thing- only it was to make people respect her as an agent and make her remember that she was an agent, that she wasn’t undercover. 

“Once, all my friends grabbed me just like this, got me ready for a date and shoved me out the door. I was pissed, but went along with it anyway. Two years later, we were still dating, and everything was perfect. He was fed too, so he saw what we saw. The only thing he couldn’t stand was how I shoved everyone into a corner when I was nervous or pissed or sad or upset and snapped at them until I felt better. He left me because of that, and every day I wonder if I had only been nicer, had bit my tongue better.” 

“This doesn’t sound like encouragement to date Mick.”

“Shut up and let me finish the story. Anyway, I met him a few years later, on a case, and he was an utter asshole. Like, even my teammates, who didn’t even like me wanted to punch him in the face because of how he treated me. I stopped believing that I was the one to ruin the relationship after that. Anyway, the point of the story is, if you find someone you can be yourself with, take the opportunity and grab it with both hands. Mick isn’t going to wince at your past, Emily. He’s seen some shit too. He will happily shoulder your problems, and won’t even ask you to try to carry his. You’ll probably have to get him drunk to get him to talk about it. At least, that’s what Sam does.”

“And everything ended up happily ever after, after all cause you are dating Coop and you two are perfect together.” Emily said quietly, smirking.

“How did you know?” Beth hissed, looking at the door, alarmed. 

“He watches you more then he watches anyone else on the team, even Gina. Overprotective. Your team might think of it as a shared past, and that’s what it was in the beginning, but it evolved to more then that, slowly over time. It’s why none of them noticed it even if they are profilers. I only noticed it because I had fresh eyes. You just confirmed my suspicions when you called him Sam.” Emily said quietly under the sounds of JJ, Pen and Gina critiquing her closet. “And no, I’m not going to tell anybody.” 

“Thank you. Now that I’ve been on his team, I don’t think I could work anywhere else. And I don’t want to give him up either.” Beth whispered back.

“Of course.” Emily smiled. 

“Sam told me that he hasn’t ever seen Mick moon over someone like he has over before. He said to tell you that if Mick hurt you, Mick would probably shoot himself before anyone had even gotten a chance to get in line to do it.”

“Really?” Emily asked, with a hint of a blush. 

“Yep, and he sounded smug too. Said that it was good for him.” Beth grinned. “I’ll add my endorsement on top of that. Mick was showing off that entire case, for you, and Sam says he did the same thing in San Fran. You will be good for him.” Beth smiled, before they were overrun by a group of giggly blondes with armloads of clothes. “Oh shoot me now.” Beth groaned. It didn’t take long for the three blonde musketeers to force Emily into a red dress and then started arguing on how to do her makeup and if she should wear any jewelry. Emily took advantage of their distraction and quietly slipped out of the room, not surprised when Beth followed her. “Have I mentioned that I’m glad I’m not the one that they are torturing.”

“Yes.” Emily said, walking over to her closet and removing a false panel in the floor.

“That looks like it came out of a spy movie.”

“Considering that’s where I got the idea, it kinda did.” She said, pulling out a very specific gun holster. She then walked over to the gun safe embedded in her nightstand- for easy midnight reaching if necessary, and pulled out her standard issue.

“How in the hell are you going to hide a thigh holster under that dress.” Beth's exclamation brought everyone into the room. 

“Where else am I supposed to put it?” Emily grinned “This holster was designed to go under dresses, and this dress was tailored to hide a gun, even if it doesn’t look like it.”

“Really? Cause that dress is really tight.”

“Yep. I have an amazing tailor. She finds it entertaining to find new and interesting ways for me to hide guns.” Emily grinned. Hetty might kill her if she ever finds out that she had described her as a tailor, but it was the easiest explanation.

“Any chance you could introduce me?” Beth asked. “You know how hard it is to find things that might hide a gun when you aren’t the same height as most people. And a woman on top of that.”

It wasn’t really Hetty who did her clothes, obviously, but one of the people who used to work in Hetty’s office, doing clothes for the undercover operators, who had to move to DC for her husband’s job. She had then opened up a tailor shop in DC, one that many federal agents used. The dress had been a gift from Hetty though, so it wasn’t all that much of a lie. “Yeah, sure. She’s been pretty busy the last few times I’ve popped in, so I don’t know if she has the time, but I’ll ask.” Emily smiled. 

“Well, if you think she can, please give me her contact info.” Beth smiled. 

“Can we get back to the important question of why are you bringing a gun on a date?” Garcia sounded scandalized. 

“The FBI doesn’t require us to carry while off duty, but it’s recommended, especially in a unit like the BAU, when we see so many dangerous criminals, some of which are bound to have grudges.” JJ explained.

“And I assure you Mick will also be armed.” Beth told her 

“And I think he might find it disappointing if she isn’t armed.” Gina added.

“Agents are so weird.” Pen sighed and went into the bathroom. The rest of the room managed to hold their straight faces for only a matter of seconds before they burst into laughter. This wasn’t so bad after all, Emily decided. She would have probably been stressing about where they were going and how to figure out what to wear. And being surrounded by coworkers while not talking about serial killers was nice. 

“That we are.” Emily grinned. 

  
  


It wasn’t long after that that the girls left, with strict orders to not touch her face, and she was definitely not supposed to change. Emily just laughed, and waved them out. She was glad that there was only about twenty minutes until Mick was supposed to show up. She put her shoes and purse beside the door, then puttered around the apartment, cleaning whatever little things that she noticed. 

She wasn’t surprised when the knock at the door came at 6:55. Mick seemed like the type of person to be early. She approved- one ex who was always late taught her that she really hated that habit. She opened the door to see Mick- for once without his usual leather jacket and jeans, instead in a dress shirt and slacks.

“Wow.” he said, looking her up and down “You look really nice.” 

“Thank you.” Emily smiled, trying to keep from blushing. “You do too.” she said as she scooped her purse up, then using the doorway to support herself as she put on her heels. He reached out a steadying hand that she accepted, then turned around and turned her security system on, stepping out the door before it could start wailing at her. 

“How are you?” he asked as they waited for the elevator.

“Good, slightly tired, but that’s normal after a long flight, especially all the way out to California.”

“Do you ever think that it’s odd that we have so many west coast serial killers?” he asked.

“It’s either that or they are here in DC.” She grinned “At least when they are in DC we don’t have a long flight, and we get to sleep in our own beds at night, which is always amazing.”

“You can say that again! I’ve spent more nights in a hotel then in my own apartment so far this year.” Mick said as they exited the elevator and walked through the lobby of the building. As they got outside, Emily did her usual quick glance for any threats, and as usual didn’t see anything. She noticed Mick doing the same thing out of the corner of her eye and smiled- it was nice to see that he was appropriately paranoid too, even if she lived in a really nice neighborhood. 

“Oh, wow, is this your car?” Emily said, impressed, as he led her over to a car in the guest parking lot of her apartment building. “Aston Martin DB7?”

“Yeah, the V12 Vantage. I’m impressed, you know your cars.” he grinned at her, and she flushed faintly.

“Yeah, being able to label cars is a really nice thing, you can identify who it is you are chasing much quicker. And I like cars.” Emily blushed harder, then hid it by opening the passenger side door and getting in. He got in after her, and they drove off. It was only a ten minute drive to where they were going, a ride that was mostly silent after they finished with the standard pleasantries. They pulled up into the parking lot of an Italian restaurant and Emily spoke up.

“I should warn you I’m picky about my Italian restaurants.” Emily warned him, glancing out the car window at the glimmer of lights in the dark smoggy night “Cause I lived in Rome for long enough to learn there are good Italian restaurants and there is everything else.”

“Well, this one comes very highly recommended, so I hope it meets your standards.” Mick grinned and turned the car off. She briefly wondered if he ever wasn’t smiling, but abandoned the thought to get out of the car before he could swing around and get it for her. 

“I was going to get that.” he said, pouting. She internally swore, because the pout was just as adorable as the grin, especially when his hair was the wavy mess that managed to look planned and he was actually wearing a dress shirt instead of his leather jacket for once. His attractiveness was just going up the more she saw of him, and that wasn’t exactly a good thing if she wanted this to be a one time thing. Despite Beth’s little pep talk, every relationship that she had ever gotten into with a coworker had epically failed, and she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to try again. Nevertheless, she swallowed and answered. 

“I’ve never understood the point of waiting for a man to come around and open a door when I can get it just as easily.” 

He just laughed and led her into the restaurant, linking her fingers with his as if they had done it a million times and this wasn’t their first date. He waited until they were seated and looking over their menus to speak up again. “So how long were all of the girls at your house? Because I ran into Beth in her car on my way into the parking lot, and she looked like she had been tortured.” Mick winced.

“About two hours. And I agree it was torture. Pen is bad enough on her own when she gets an idea into her head, and it gets worse when you add JJ into it, but you add Gina, and it just gets worse. I can’t really talk though, I think Pen and I tortured JJ worse when she admitted she was dating Will.

“Will?” Mick asks right before their waiter comes over and they get distracted by drink orders.

“William LaMontagne, JJ’s boyfriend/ almost husband. It’s utterly adorable. They met on a case in New Orleans, he was the lead detective on a case, and they spent the entire case flirting. Then we met on a case in Miami, and the entire team knew she was dating someone, and we were pretty sure that it was him, so we spent the entire case saying things like he’s cute you should go for him, and she kissed him in front of the team at the end of the case. Then, we were on a case in New York and he appeared in our hotel. We were surprised to see him, and he was surprised to learn that JJ hadn’t told us yet that she was pregnant. Later there was this whole thing where he asked her to marry him, but she didn’t want to because of the whole you are just marrying me because of the kid thing. He still has the engagement ring though, so they will totally get married eventually.”

“That does sound kind of adorable and if you tell anyone I said that I will kill you and hide your body.” Mick smirked at her.

“Death threats on the first date? That doesn’t sound good.” Emily laughed, then had to assure the poor waiter that it was a joke, and they were both federal agents, and it was a long running thing, she was fine. He was only mollified by them both flashing their badges, and Emily was sure he was in the kitchen telling tales of the crazy couple sitting in the corner. Emily had managed to keep from laughing until she looked at Mick, and they both had to fight to keep their laughter from causing the entire restaurant from staring at them. The urge to laugh only got worse when a new waiter appeared to take their orders. 

“So, do you have any siblings?” Mick asked once his shoulders stopped shaking.

Emily smiled “No, I was entirely unplanned. With my mother and father both playing politics, they never wanted children, and after I was born, absolutely no desire to repeat the experience. You?”   
  


“I have one sister, Jemma. She’s studying in London right now, and dating my ex-spotter, actually. I had to read off a list of death threats when they finally confessed to me, but they are good for each other now. Even if I still contemplate murdering him every once and awhile.” 

Emily laughed, “Overprotective much?” she teased.

“That’s my little sister, of course I’m overprotective.” Mick grinned back at her. 

Emily gave him a smile, picking up her wine glass and watched the red swirl before taking a sip. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t treat me like I’m made of glass, even if it is kind of adorable.”

“Emily I watched you take out a man who was like two feet taller then you with a single punch, then use a taser that was disguised as lipstick on another, then use the actual lipstick that was hiding on the other end without missing a beat. I don’t think I could do much to match that.” Mick grinned “And have I mentioned how hot that was? I didn’t mention it then cause we were getting swarmed by cops and teammates, but seriously.”

“Usually, I get told I’m too deadly, then get broken up with, so I’ll take it.” Emily smiled back, just as the waiter showed up with their food, giving them a weird look. “We seriously have no luck with waiters”

“I will never tell you are too deadly, and I agree. It’s like we were jinxed.”

Emily giggled as she scooped up a ravioli, and Mick gave her a look. She would agree with the look, she almost never giggled, but with this incident… “So, the team was in this restaurant in Mississippi on a it’s not a satanic cult case, and Reid would not shut up about how this Satanic killer differed from the rest, and this was before Rossi had joined the team, so of course he was quoting the entire book, along with the case details, and our poor scandalized waitress almost fainted. Reid didn’t even notice, he just continued blowing past all of our attempts to stop him until Hotch of all people threatened to duck tape his mouth, get his food put in a to go box, and not take the tape off until they were back at the station. Then Morgan threatened to switch all of his coffee for decaf.” 

“I can so see Reid doing that.” Mick chuckled “Wait, doesn’t that mean all of you would be drinking decaf too?”

“Yes, but we would be able to do it much easier then Reid.” she laughed “I swear it’s like he’s 50% caffeine 50% genius.” 

“From what I remember though the haze of not nearly enough sleep, that seems to match up with what I remember of San Francisco” Mick grinned.

“I don’t ever remember laughing this much on a date before.” Emily smiled. 

“Then they were all stupid assholes. And deserved the dumping that they presumably got.” Mick smirked.

“Oh god, don’t even remind me. There was this one moron, the first few dates went really well, he didn’t complain about my schedule or anything. Two months have passed, and I wonder why we always went to my place, even when his was closer, so I came up with a reason to go to his.” she paused and waited for his reaction.

Mick didn’t disappoint “Crime groupie. No wait, still lived with his mother?”

“Hoarder. Like, belongs on the tv show, nothing but a very small path through the rooms level hoarder. And this wasn’t some tiny apartment either. It was an actual house. I broke up with him after learning that he wouldn’t even contemplate getting rid of his ‘collection.’ It was bad. I went home and sterilized anything that he might have touched level of bad.”

“Ew, gross!” Mick winced “I assure you that I am not a hoarder. The only things that I collect are old antique guns, and that is all in storage in London, anyway.” 

“I’m guessing that you didn’t want to fight to bring the collection into the country?” Emily asked.

“Ugh, yeah. I mean I might be an FBI agent, but even with flinging my badge around, that would have been one hell of a hassle. What about you, do you collect anything?”

“Languages mostly. Oh, and Rossi and I have created a list of things to never do again, with additions made by all of the rest of the team.”

“Ok, I have to know, what’s the number one thing?”

“Are you sure that you want to know?” she asked “It is dinner after all, and with our jobs…”

“I asked, didn’t I?” Mick smirked “Just tell me.”

“Chili.”

“Chili?”

“Ever heard of Floyd Feylinn Ferell?”

“The cannibalist? Yeah why? Oh. Ew. Yeah. I see your point.”

“Just smelling chili makes most of the team gag now. There was this one case in Georgia shortly after, where a deputy brought chili for lunch, and I have never seen a group of FBI agents turn green and run from a room that fast. The poor sheriff was so confused, and then we made him throw up when he wanted to know why. It was really bad.”

“Well, note to self, I’m never going to eat chili ever again.” Mick winced.

“Oh, trust me, you work at this job long enough, and eventually you will get some weird food aversions.” Emily winced. Canada’s killer pigs was also a case that was bad- the entire team refused to eat pork for like two months after. 

“I’m not even going to ask more questions. I have a feeling I’d regret it later.” Mick winced. “Any of those aversions a funny story?”

“This was before my or Rossi’s time, but we have sworn to never leave Reid alone with anyone famous.” Emily offered

“Oh god even just that sentence promises that it’s going to be good.” Mick snickered

“So, long story short, the team was called out to LA because a starlet had a stalker. Reid was assigned protection duty, and starlet, instead of staying in her house, with all of the curtains closed like anyone sane decides to go for a swim in her pool. Then decides that Reid needs to loosen up and tries to get him to swim with her. He refuses, but she pulls him into the pool and kisses him. Reid goes all wait what your kissing me, then wait what this shouldn’t be happening, and gets out of the pool dripping wet. Morgan shows up, finds a paparazzi in like twelve seconds, and demands the film so Reid’s professional life didn’t get ruined. According to Morgan, the whole thing was hilarious. I think he might still have copies of the film, not as blackmail of course.”

“Of course, FBI agents would never blackmail each other.” Mick grinned back.

“Of course never!” Emily grinned. “Just like how I totally don’t have pictures of Derek in all sorts of embarrassing positions. You?”

“I am kind of lacking in the blackmail department. Beth is kind of hard to blackmail, and while I have plenty of embarrassing things that I know about Coop, I learned them all when we were doing classified things, so I can’t really use them. Gina and Prophet, yes.” he grinned.

“That’s too bad.” Emily said in mock sympathy. The rest of the date continued like that, sharing embarrassing stories of coworkers and laughing about the other weird things that they had encountered on the job. 

  
  


When they got back to her apartment, Mick insisted on walking her to her door. Emily teased him about the suddenly gentlemanly behavior to which he responded by rubbing the back of his neck, clearly embarrassed and trying to hide the blush there. “Well, I figured that I had to do this right you know. You are far to amazing for me to fuck something up with and loose any chance with.”

Emily blushed, she felt like she was in high school again, blushing over her first boyfriend. What was it about Mick Rawson that did this to her? “I’m not that amazing.” Emily rolled her eyes as she was climbing the stairs to the apartment, unwilling to wait for the elevator. 

“Please. You're hot, you’re funny, you won’t freak out over the job, you have a badge and a gun, and given how close that your team is, you won’t freak out over the amount of time I spend with my teammates. What’s not to like?” He smirked at her.

“Let’s see.” She said, mentally debating on what to tell him, what wasn’t too classified to tell “The fact that I could disappear at a moment's notice to somewhere in the world because something is happening that involves something that I had worked on before. The fact that between our schedules, we probably wouldn’t see each other much. The fact that we are both agents and the complications that comes with that. And I have often been told I am way too independent for any relationship to ever actually work out.” She leaned against the wall beside her door, not opening it yet. Waiting to see where this went. 

“I don’t care about that,” he protested. “Will it be hard? Yeah, sometimes. But I wouldn’t try if I thought that we couldn’t make it work.” 

She sighed, mentally flinging her hands up in the air. “Come on in, so we don’t bug the neighbors.” she ignored his smirk at his perceived victory. “I enjoyed this, I enjoyed the date with someone who actually got what we do for a living without flinching over the fact that I see dead bodies regularly, I just don’t want to start something that will die because of the job that we do.” 

“Who says it will die? We won’t know unless we try. And these last few days have been so easy, Emily. Even when working, we fit. We can make it work.” 

“Ok, you’ve convinced me.” she sighed. They hadn’t really been arguing, but more of him trying to persuade her. Added to that, both of them were profilers, and they both knew that she wasn’t really protesting that hard, more of running the possible arguments against this out and letting him counter them. He was right, they fit. They worked together well, and as tonight had proven, they fit just as well off the job. 

He glanced over her shoulder, suddenly distracted. “Oh wow.” he muttered, walking away from her kitchen where they had been standing, towards the living room and the wall of windows overlooking the capital. 

“Beautiful, isn’t it.” She said, moving over to stand next to him. “It’s the reason I chose this apartment when I moved here. Fortunately, the building owner likes having federal agents in the building. Makes the other people feel safer.” 

“Totally worth it if you get this view,” he said, still immersed of the beauty of the Christmas lights everywhere. 

“Yeah, I agree,” she said, looking at the lights of the Washington monument, Lincoln memorial, and the Senate Building. The Christmas lights were just a blur of color in her vision, a twinkling reminder that life wasn’t all killers and crimes to be stopped. It was why she had a pair of binoculars on a table near the window, especially at Christmas time. After bad cases, she would just sit and look at the lights and wind down before doing anything else. It was one of her ways of decompressing. Just standing here with Mick she could feel herself relaxing. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him, both content to just stand and look for the moment. 

It was a while before he broke the silence. “You know what I just realized?” She made an inquiring noise and he continued. “We never did the whole first date questions thing. I mean, there was one, but other then that nothing.” 

“Huh. You’re right.” she said, after mentally going over their night. “I have to admit that was like the easiest first date I’ve ever been on.” 

“So, first date questions.” he smiled mischievously. “Where’s your favorite place on Earth?” 

“Well, that’s a hard one. I’ve lived in so many countries, so many cities. I like some things about some places, but like other things about other places. Mostly it’s the people I think. I love DC because of the people here. I didn’t fit in with my previous team, when I had a desk job. I love this team, love the people, love the atmosphere, love the work we do. What about you?”

“Well, my first true love will always be Wales. After that, London, through DC is growing on me.” he grinned.

“Well, given that you live here, I’d say that’s a good thing.” she snorted “Ok, what’s your favorite type of movie?” 

“Action. I find it hilarious to watch and point out everything that they get wrong. And since I joined an investigative team, cops shows get added to the list.”

Emily grinned. “I’m the same. Sometimes JJ, Garcia and I have movie nights where we just sit and bitch about everything they get wrong. Don’t get Garcia started on the portrayal of hackers in movies either. I mean, most of the stuff she does takes way longer then it seems- she works just as many hours as we do, she just does it from a desk.” 

They passed the next hour like that, asking questions and answering them. They had eventually migrated to the couch, though they could still see the lights from there. They only stopped when the lack of sleep from the last few days sent Mick home and Emily straight into her bed. She stayed awake for a while, contemplating on the way the day had gone. She couldn’t find any fault in the way the day had gone. She had enjoyed it more then she thought she would. Beth was right- Mick was totally worth it, and this might work out after all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all of my fellow Americans- happy turkey day! I have the next chapter partially written out, but it needs a lot work and of editing, and it's Christmas themed, so I will probably post it right around Xmas, if not day of. I hope you enjoyed this chapter!


	7. The Present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Because I didn’t want use the name of some poor Montana town to create havoc, chaos and murder in, I decided to create my own. Thus comes into existence the small town of Cliffstone, Montana. Everything else, I’ll leave for you to find out yourself!

Chapter 7

  
  


You knew the case was bad when we get called in at three in the morning. Emily couldn’t help but to grumble to herself as she walked through the snow to the doors of the Quantico FBI building. Added to that it was only four days until Christmas, and the case just got worse. 

She had beaten most of the team there, except for JJ and Hotch who were the first to get called, and who from the looks of their lights, were in their offices. She had a relatively short drive to Quantico in the middle of the night, only about 30 minutes, though some of her teammates were closer. When she got to her desk, she briefly contemplated doing some of the thankfully minimal paperwork there, but knowing that whatever she wrote would have to be reviewed before she submitted it, so she could make sure that nothing weird had made its way into the report thanks to her exhaustion, instead decided to go straight to the conference room and take a short nap at her chair there instead. 

She was woken up about 15 minutes later by the rest of the team coming in, and raised her head from where it was pillowed on her arms. 

“Sleepy, Prentiss?” Morgan teased her as he hobbled in on his crutches. 

“Shut up Morgan. It’s three in the morning. If you say that you aren’t tired, you are lying.” 

“Ok, everyone this is a bad one.” Hotch announced grimly from the back of the groups as they all filter in through the door. Emily internally winced. No matter how bad it had been before, it was going to be terrible now, she just knew it. 

“I hope you packed your thermals, we’re going to Montana.” Garcia said, though even she looked very tired, and Garcia was usually good at being full of energy no matter what ungodly hour of the morning it was. 

JJ moved to her usual spot, standing in front of the screen, and clicked the remote, turning the screen on to reveal the face of a smiling man. 

“This is Thomas Johnson. 46, married, two kids.” She said, and Emily winced. Those poor kids, losing their father so close to Christmas. JJ switched the picture to show the man lying on a bed, with a bag over his head. “And this is what his neighbor found when she came over to see why he didn’t pick his kids up from school that day. Johnson worked as a bartender and slept most of the day, waking up in time to pick the kids up from school. The school secretary told the police that he hadn’t been more then 5 minutes late in years, and so when he didn’t show up, she called his neighbor to pick up the kids, as his wife was working. From all accounts they were a normal hardworking family, nice couple, no enemies.” 

A new picture popped up, of another smiling man, and Hotch started up where JJ left off “A week later, the body of Benjamin Smith was found. 42, married, one child, a girl.” A picture of another body appeared “Instead of the suffocation with the bag, Smith was strangled with a belt on the floor of his kitchen. He was a stay at home dad, and his husband found him, fortunately before their daughter came home from school. Again, normal hardworking family, nice couple, and while there were a few people in town that didn’t like them, none of them would do something like this, and none of them had motive.” 

“Today, or yesterday, really, Elijah Williams was found dead. Stabbed, then strangulation, presumably when the stabbing took too long. He was a single father to a 16 year old son and worked from home. His son found him, unfortunately.” JJ finished. 

“That poor kid.” Garcia murmured.

“I’m going to just state the obvious and say that the unsub probably doesn’t like fathers.” Rossi said dryly.

“Yeah, three dads dead, this close to Christmas? There’s probably some trauma around holidays as well, considering that the first victim died only a few days after Thanksgiving.” Emily said, trying to avoid looking at the pictures of the bodies on the screen. She felt so bad for those kids- the holiday season was never going to be the same for them ever again, and they would have to live without a parent for the rest of their lives. 

“He must have watched the victims beforehand to figure out their routines before killing them, as how else could he kill three people and not get caught?” Morgan said, flipping through the file, looking at each of the victim’s daily schedules. “All three of them had fairly consistent schedules, according to those who knew them.” 

“And he has always struck in the middle of the day, when most people are at work. He must have either a job that is lenient about when you take your breaks and how long they were, he is his own boss, or he does something that allows him to make his own schedule.” Reid said, frowning at the same page that Morgan was.

“This unsub’s time between kills is getting shorter and shorter the closer we get to Christmas. If Christmas is a trigger, there will be more and more bodies as the days go by. Wheels up in 30 minutes.” Hotch said, and Emily nodded. She just hoped that they got a chance to sleep on the plane. 

  
  


As they boarded the plane, they had the very amusing sight of watching Morgan struggle up the narrow steps with his crutches. Reid just smirked- his brace had been taken off only a few days earlier, and he was medically cleared to be out in the field, while it would take Morgan a bit longer to get the same clearance, and he would be stuck in the police precinct for the duration of the case. 

Hotch, as usual, waited for the plane to get up in the air before he started on the next round of briefing on the case. “These men have a lot in common, and it’s clear that the unsub has a type.” 

“You can say that again! They are all fathers, they all have at least sort of similar looks, or as close as you are going to get in a town this size, and they were all home alone at the time of the murders.” Garcia chirped from the computer.

“Look here, the police report says that the first victim, Thomas Johnson was a gun owner, and the police found the gun, unloaded thankfully, in his nightstand. If he had known anything was happening, he would have reached for it, but didn’t.” Reid said. 

“So either the unsub is really good at getting into houses quietly, or Johnson was a really deep sleeper.” Morgan speculated.

“It could be both.” Reid pointed out. 

“I wonder who he is killing with every victim. It’s got to be someone that he is mad at, as every kill gets a slight bit more violent and bloody. Is it himself, or maybe his father?” Emily said, glancing down at the pictures. 

“I would guess father, as he’s very careful to keep the kids from seeing. Maybe his father died like that? Though hiding it from the kids could also point it towards killing himself, if he’s a father.” Rossi glanced up from his own file “Though I really hope he doesn’t have kids. Living in a house with someone who has this much rage? They might be abused, or traumatized if nothing else.” 

“So, we should look for someone with issues with controlling his temper, and he or his father looks similar to the victims. Anyone have anything else to add?” Hotch said, glancing over at all of them.

“I know we usually try not to consider age, as it is often the hardest thing to guess, but all of the victims were around the same age, so either he is that age, or his father died at that age? I mean, there might be a reason he’s going after fathers in their 40s and not fathers in their 30s or 50s.” Emily said, frowning at the ages of the victims. They were all within 6 years of each other, and that was really close for how specific of a victim type the unsub seemed to have. 

“That’s a good point, though we shouldn’t lean too heavily on it.” Hotch said.    
  


“There should be snow on the ground right now, I haven’t looked at the weather, but statistically, Montana, especially in the Rocky Mountain area should get a lot of snow, but the police reports don’t make any mention of there being anything out of place outside, no footprints or anything.” Reid pointed out. 

“That is very odd, you would think that the cops would at least note in the report that they looked and there was nothing.” Morgan pointed out.

JJ winced, “The mayor Jim Doyle was the one to call us in, not the chief of police. I don’t want to say the words that we are all thinking, but.” 

“Ok, everyone. Let's get a few hours of sleep to make up for what we missed, and be prepared to hit the ground running.” Hotch said grimly. 

They flew into the closest airport, and drove to the small town, and unfortunately, Reid was right. There was snow on the ground and from the looks of it, it had been there for a while. “So who's placing money on what.” Rossi said cynically “Montana’s hated us since Ruby Ridge, and the Freeman standoff only made it worse, I hope this is just more of that.”

“It could be anything, Dave. Let’s not speculate until we get there.” Hotch said, though he also sounded like he was questioning things. “We are here to catch a serial killer and provide justice to the victim’s families.”

The team all nodded, though Emily was pretty sure that they were all thinking the same thing- what was going on in that police station?

They arrived to find the town's mayor waiting for them in the parking lot of the police station. “Hello everyone, I’m Jim Doyle, the mayor of Cliffstone.” 

“I’m Special Agent Hotchner, and my team, Rossi, Reid, Morgan, Prentiss, and Jareau” He said pointing to each of them in turn. 

“Nice to meet all of you. Now before we go inside where it is actually warm, I need to warn you that the chief of police was not happy that I called you guys. He thought that they didn’t need help, but after the third man died and there was no progress, I decided enough was enough and did it anyway. I didn’t want to be the cause of another father dying.” 

“Thank you for the warning.” Hotch said, barley repressing a wince. Emily did her best to keep her face straight. This was going to really suck. 

They followed the mayor into the tiny police station, and while Emily was grateful for the warmth, she was not looking forward to what was going to happen. They walked into a room filled with hostility. While some of the officers looked like they were only glaring at them because everyone else was, most of the room looked at them like they would dance on the teams graves if they mysteriously dropped dead. Emily had been in worse places, but this was worse then she expected. It was comparable to the glares that they got in Phoenix, with the cop killer case. Emily didn’t show that she was affected by the glares, and neither did the team, though the mayor did flinch a little. Hotch headed straight for the chief of the police, even though he had to almost push through the crowd. The team followed him, looking like they hadn’t even noticed the hostility and this was a completely normal case. 

“Chief. I’m Agent Hotchner, and this is my team, agents Morgan, Rossi, Prentis, Jareau, and Reid.”

“Chief. I’m Agent Hotchner, and this is my team, agents Morgan, Rossi, Prentis, Jareau, and Reid.” Hotch said, reaching his hand out. Even before he made the motion, Emily knew the chief wouldn't shake his hand.

She was right, the chief acted like he wasn't even there. "We don't agree with you mind psychobabble here." He said, scoffing "And we don't want you here. The only reason you are is because I was overruled."

"Well, they are here and they are here to help catch a killer." the mayor said sternly. Emily could hear the unsaid word that followed what he had said- and if you don't help them or do something to keep them from working, you are so fired. Emily was surprised the man hadn't been fired earlier, if this was his normal behavior.

"Where do you want us to work?" Hotch asked, somehow remaining polite.

The chief led them over to a desk in an awkward corner of the room, which was directly in front of his office, so he could see them from his desk. It looked like it had been hastily cleaned, and Emily could see a conference room down the hall. More of his snubbing then. They all settled into the chairs crowded around the desk, and Morgan pulled Garcia's speaker and laptop out. “Prentiss, Rossi, go to the most recent scene. Morgan, JJ, stay here and start working on the profile. Reid and I will go to the coroner's office.” Hotch told them. 

“Officer Miller, go with the agents.” the Chief glared. An officer looked up, nodded, then walked out of the room. Rossi looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but Emily just shrugged and followed the man, with Rossi on her heels. 

The officer waited until they got outside to say anything. “I’m sorry about that, I’m Charles Miller.” He said. 

“Emily Prentiss” She said, shaking his hand.

“David Rossi.” and as per usual, the officer’s eyes lit up “Yes, that Rossi, and yes I will sign the books if you bring them.” 

“Thank you so much sir!” Miller said, “I was going to suggest taking my car as I know the roads, and some of the roads up to the Williams place can be a little tricky if you don’t know them” 

“Sure, as you said, you know the area.” Emily said after a quick glance at Rossi.

  
  


As the car pulled up to the scene, the young officer sighed. “I just wanted to say that I don’t agree with the chief at all. This is worse then anything I’ve ever seen, and here in Cliffstone, we don’t really have that many murders. This is the Chief’s first big case since becoming the chief, so he wants to solve it so he doesn't get fired, but we really need help on this one. It’s pretty bad.”

“It’s ok, kid. We get it. And we won’t tell the Chief if you want to pretend you don’t want us here.” Rossi said. 

“That would be awesome, thanks.” Officer Miller said. “It would really suck if I lost this job, and the Chief has been making noises about firing people who disagree with him. Honestly, he’s not normally this bad, or I wouldn’t have taken this job in the first place, but his wife died about a year ago, and then this case hit and he just got worse. I think all of us are keeping our heads down and hoping he goes back to normal after we catch this bastard.”

Emily glanced at Rossi, and he turned to meet her eyes, as she was in the back seat. That certainly didn’t sound good. She didn’t think that he was their unsub though, as he was a little older then what their guesstimated age rage was. Stranger things had happened, though, and the Chief was definitely physical enough to have been able to do the murders. 

  
  


There was a noted lack of blood in the house as they walked in. Everything looked normal- mail sitting on the table for someone to look through, a few dishes in the sink, a pile of shoes on and around a rack near the door. It wasn’t until they got to the office that it started looking like a crime scene and not a home. 

“Was there evidence of forced entry?” Emily asked as she looked closely at the blood pool. 

“Um, kinda? Mr. William had a hidden key that he kept outside in case he or his son forgot their keys. Unfortunately the only spots where you can hide a key in this weather, with the snow covering almost everything, are pretty obvious. When his son got here, the spare key was in the lock and the door was partially open. He pushed the door open, came in and found his dad. He’s with his aunt now, he’s pretty traumatized.” Officer Miller told them. 

“Anyone would be.” Rossi sighed, inspecting the blood spatter patterns on the papers on the desk. 

“Does the Aunt live in town? We are probably going to want to question the son, eventually.” Emily asked. 

“Yeah she does, though she swore that he isn’t going to step foot in this house until he wants to.” 

“Oh, we wouldn’t question him in the house. We use a type of questioning called a cognitive interview. He’ll run us through what happened, but it won’t be here. Probably at the police station or at his aunt’s house.” Rossi reassured the officer.

“Ok, because out of all of the things that the chief has done in this case, I think that telling the aunt that the kid won’t have to come into this house is the one that I agree with the most. That kid will break if he had to come into this house and relive everything so soon, but he really wants to help find who killed his dad.”

“Yeah, that’s something we can agree with too. I’ll talk to my boss, just so that he knows, but he wouldn’t have forced the kid into the house anyway.” Emily told him. “So, the victim was sitting at the desk, on his laptop,” Emily said, gesturing at the black screen still sitting on the desk covered in blood. “The killer came in the door, but the victim had headphones in, so he didn’t hear anything. The killer stabs him here, and here” she said miming the hits with her flashlight.

“But the victim starts struggling despite the pain.” Rossi said, gesturing to the things that were out of place in the room. “So the killer goes back to his old stand by and strangles him.” 

“And then leaves, before the kid comes home.” Emily finished, frowning. “If he knew the victim’s routines, then how did he not know that the victim would be sitting like this? And how did he slack the victims? From this window, the victim can see the front yard and street, so he probably would have noticed someone sitting in the street that didn’t belong. Especially at this time of the year, if you were sitting in a car you would have to have the heater running, you’d freeze if you didn’t.”

“Cameras?” Officer Miller suggested.

“Yeah, but not in the house, or he would have known the victims routines better. Outside cameras then. And they would have to be somewhere inconspicuous, but with a view of the house. Something that blends in.” Rossi said, peering out the window, looking at all of the places a camera could hide.

“Maybe a game camera? Nobody’s going to say anything about a game camera, they will just assume that one of the neighbors put it up to catch whatever has been trying to get into the trash or something.” the officer told them.

“Yeah, that could definitely be a possibility. Aren’t they motion activated as well? So the unsub wouldn’t even have to look through hours of useless film, he could only have the family and when they come and go.” Emily said, looking closer at the trees. “Come on, let's go outside and look.” 

“I’ll stay in here, I want to look more at these papers.” Rossi said, waving them out.

“Got it.” Emily said, leading Miller out, who looked more then happy to leave the blood soaked room. Given how few homicides Cliffstone had, she was surprised and slightly impressed that he wasn’t green and looking like he was going to puke.

It only took them a matter of minutes to find the game camera, high up a tree on the opposite side of the road. Emily took a few pictures of it with her camera for evidence as Officer Miller glared at the snow covered tree for a few moments before sighing and climbing up it, the snow in it’s branches falling down on him as he shook the tree. The game camera was in a fairly easy to get to spot, not that a man climbing up a tree could ever be inconspicuous. He put gloves on before he removed the camera, putting it in an evidence bag and tucking the entire thing inside his jacket so he had both hands to climb down. 

When he hit the ground he pulled the camera out of his jacket to look at it better. “Well, do you want the good news, the bad news, or the really bad news?” 

“Whichever.” Emily sighed. “Let’s go back inside where it is warmer, so we can tell Rossi.” she said. He nodded, and they went back to the house, where Rossi was still looking at papers. 

“You got something.” He said, glancing up at them. “I saw you climb the tree.” 

“Good news- we can access the camera’s memory, so if he wasn’t careful, we might get a picture of him. The bad news- the camera wirelessly transmits, so he wouldn’t even have to be here to stalk the victim. He could have been in his house, or going shopping, or just about anything, and these pictures will send themselves to his phone or computer. The really bad news- the battery still has power, so he probably got pictures of us finding it and removing it. I put it in the bag in a way that the thing can’t see out, so he can’t see us anymore.”

“That sounds fancy.”

“Yeah, these things go for about 400 dollars, so they aren’t exactly the cheapest option he could have gone for. It does keep him out of the neighborhood, though, so he has less of a chance of getting noticed.” 

“Wait.” Emily frowned, thinking “If he didn’t remove it when he killed Williams, maybe there might be others at the other crime scenes, though that would get pretty expensive fast.”

“We should go check the other houses to see if the cameras are there, or if there is any evidence of them being there.” Rossi said, stripping his gloves off and dropping in the biohazard bucket by the door. 

“The police station on the way to the next crime scene, we can drop the camera off there so the techs have a chance to start going through it.” Officer Miller suggested. 

“Sure, that gives us a chance to tell our boss everything that happened. He should be back from the coroner’s office by now, anyway.” Emily told him. 

The trip back to the station was uneventful, as was their talk with Hotch. Despite his stressed look, he agreed that they needed to go check the other houses more then he needed them there to help him wrangle the protesting police. Meanwhile, Officer Miller managed to slip off and deliver the camera to evidence, tell a friend where they were going, so the Chief couldn't complain that he didn't know where they were because I couldn't find you, chief, so I told Officer Weber' as he said to Emily and Rossi once they were back in the car, looking innocent. He was very good at that, Emily thought. Between his youthful face, and the face he tilted his head, he looked like he could do no wrong. It certainly was a skill that she thought would get a lot of use in the next few days.

At the next house there was more bad news- there was no camera there, but there was evidence of one having been there. The first victim's house, however, showed no evidence of a camera, which showed that the unsub had evolved more then they thought between his first kill and his second. They also thought that the camera that they had gotten from the third victim's house had been his only camera, as the victim had only been dead for about a half an hour before his son came home, and the unsub was probably waiting for things to cool down more and the constant police presence outside the house to go away before he retrieved the camera. Unfortunately, if it caught pictures of them removing the camera, he would have known that the police knew that he used cameras, and that might cause him to change again. There were three options- either he went out and bought another camera, he survived some other way, or he just attacked randomly without all of the stalking.

The first option wasn't likely as the officer pointed out, these cameras weren't exactly cheap, and two or more of them would rack up quickly, especially if the unsub was married or had someone looking over his finances in some way. That would make the purchase of the cameras very hard to hide. The second option also wasn't likely as there were very little ways that the unsub could stalk someone in his hunt area so far without someone noticing him. That left the third option.

The third option was both good and bad. If the unsub didn't have to stalk people before each kill, his kill time would speed up, but it also meant that there was a higher chance of him making a mistake in some way. That would be especially true if the team managed to find something to piss him off, like Gideon was famous for doing in their cases. He would find something that he thought the unsub would especially not like, and hold a press conference saying that the unsub was doing X thing or looked like Y. That would drive the unsub in a rage. The unfortunate thing with that strategy is that it really raised the likelihood of the unsub killing someone before the team managed to stop him. And if he managed to get past that first kill, every kill after would be a direct taunt to the team, as if the unsub was saying ‘look, you were wrong, you haven’t caught me yet, I’m still killing.’ 

However, they didn't know enough about the unsub yet to use that strategy. Even though Cliffstone was a small town, it wasn't guaranteed that The Unsub was a resident of Cliffstone. He could be from another close town, or even farther away so he hid his crimes from the cops who would suspect the residents of their own towns first. However, given how new he seemed to be at killing, Emily didn’t think that he was that cunning. In everything so far, the unsub looked to be learning as he went, finding the best, and easiest way to kill, and finding what he liked. She wouldn't be surprised if his next kill was only stabbing, with no strangulation. He seemed to be devolving in that direction, and strangulation was more personal, but also harder. Stabbing was messier, but also had more rage behind it. Stabbing someone was more rage-filled then strangling them, especially in comparison to the first victim, who was killed with the plastic bag. That kill had not felt personal enough, so he graduated to the strangulation with the belt, before moving onto stabbing and strangulation.

When they arrived back at the station, the rest of the team was tossing theories around while JJ was on her phone. From the way that she was pinching her nose, Emily was guessing that she was talking to some member of the press that annoyed her. Emily wouldn't want to have JJ's job for all the money in the world. Her habits of avoiding all the press that she could for her own safety aside, they were like a pack of hyperactive monkeys at times. JJ got shouted at, bullied, and bugged for information, but she had to stay calm, cool and collected. Emily also had noticed over the years that the press people that were consistently nice JJ tended to give a bit better of information to. It wasn't that she wasn't giving the information to everyone, but she would be nicer about it, and try to help them in thanks for being nice to her.

Emily couldn't blame her, a lot of the press that she had seen JJ deal with had been weird, like the one press guy that JJ seemed to be friends with who worked on the Bille Copeland case that she had heard about for the team. She was sure that there were a lot of nice journalists, reporters, and other news people in the world, but from the interactions that she had seen, they didn't seem to work on serial killer cases.

"All right team, what have we found." Hotch spoke up from where he was watching Reid color in his geoprofile. It was weird seeing so many empty bits of land in the map, most of Reid's maps were of cities and had a lot of houses or other buildings, empty bits of forest and mountain were not normal. It wasn't that small rural towns were less likely to have serial killers, it was that large cities had more people, so it was more likely that a serial killer lived there. If there was one serial killer for every 10,000 people, it was way more likely that the killer would be in a large city with a population of 100,000 people then a small town with only 2,000 people. It wasn’t impossible, as this case and other cases they had to go to in small towns proved, but it was rarer. 

“We found that there was evidence that a camera had been placed at the second victim’s house, but not at the first.” Rossi told them. 

"So he must have realized that while he was killing the first victim that he needed to know when he was home. He probably went to the house and nobody was home, and he had to come back later to kill him. Or something along those lines." Morgan suggested. He was leaning back in one chair, with his ankle propped up on another. Quite a few police officers were glaring at him, which Emily took to mean that he had done something to piss them off while she had been gone. Hotch probably wouldn't approve, as they were supposed to be trying to not make enemies- the last thing that they needed was another reason for another Montana police station to hate them. And people in small towns had long memories. 

"Maybe he almost got caught? Or the victim started waking up when he walked in? There are a million possibilities, but what matters is that he started changing his behavior after the first kill. He's learning from it, learning more about what he likes." Rossi said.

"Whatever it was, we know that he changes his behavior from the first kill to the second on how he stalks the victims. He also changed the way he strangled them. The first victim with a bag and the second with a belt. Why?"

"Maybe the belt makes him feel more in control?" Emily offered "And he wouldn't have to risk it ripping like you would a bag. With a flimsy bag, the victim could rip it with their teeth, and then you couldn't strangle people with it. While there is no evidence of that happening with Mr. Johnson the unsub could have realised it. The belt is a lot harder to get away from- you would have to fight the killer off while being strangled to do it. Possible, but harder then if the killer was using a bag."

"True. Anything else anyone can think of?"

"The geoprofile." Reid said. "The unsub knows the area. All of the victims are on quiet streets, suburban areas rather then rural or busy areas. In a town of this size, there aren't many of those. If he keeps killing, he's going to run out of his preferred victim type in that area soon. He will either go to the other areas to keep killing his type, or start killing people that aren't his type to stay in his preferred area.” 

“Or he goes to the next town over.” Rossi said, eyeing the map.

“That too.” Reid shrugged. Emily felt slightly wary. This was normally when they started asking the cops around them questions about the town and other towns near it- what were the people like, was there a lot of crossover between the towns, what were the towns themselves like. Emily caught Hotch’s eye, and tilted her head at the locals slightly in a silent question. Go for it, or no.

He gave her a hint of a nod, and she spoke up “Do people commute back and forth from Cliffstone to Rigby?” she asked, directing the question at the cops.

The cops glanced between each other, before a detective finally spoke up “Yeah, sometimes. Some things you can get here you can't get there, and vice versa.” 

“Thanks, Detective-” 

“Blake, ma’am” 

“Thanks, Detective Blake.” Emily smiled, then turned back to the board. “So, we know that his kill zone could widen without people thinking it very odd, even if they are being hypervigilant. After all, their neighbor is so nice, he could never do this.” She said sarcastically. 

“Do we think he will be one of the ones that nobody would suspect? There are some killers when revealed, everyone said they should have suspected him earlier.” Reid pointed out. 

“He’s organized.” Morgan said. “He had a routine of stalking and killing. That will bleed over into his normal life. His neighbors will notice that his behavior has been a little odd the last few weeks, but they won’t think that he would be a killer. We would have gotten tips about him before now if everyone thinks something is off about him. 

“That’s a good point.” Hotch said. “Anything else?” 

“Nothing that I can think of unless we find something more” Rossi said. The rest of the team agreed. 

“Ok then. Let’s go to the hotel and call it a night.” Hotch said. It was 9 at night, earlier then they usually went to bed, but with this killer, they were going to need the sleep, and they would get up in the morning, fresh and rested to start all over again.

"I should, uh, warn you guys that the only hotel in town isn't really a hotel. It's an inn. And it's tiny. You are lucky that it's even in town, really. If this was happening in Rigby, the closest hotel is here actually, and if it was full, the next closest is an hour away. There were only three rooms available, is that ok?" Detective Blake said.

"Yeah, that’s fine. We usually pair up anyway, for safety." Rossi told him.

"Ok, well I'll lead you there, it can be hard to find in the dark. Then I'm going home myself." Detective Blake said as he opened his desk drawer and grabbed a few things out. The team grabbed whatever they thought that they would need, and left everything else where it was, as they usually do. They were in a police station, who would steal from the cops? And it's not like random people can just wander in and out without being noticed.

As they shuffled out of the cramped corner, Emily noticed something- a very tiny camera pointed directly at the table that was hidden in the window of the chief's office. "Bastard." she muttered under her breath, waving off JJ when she looked at her questioningly. She would tell her when they got to the hotel. After she swept the thing for bugs and more cameras.

The inn was tiny, just as the Detective told them it would be. It also had only three rooms- if anyone else tried to check in, they would be out of luck, cause the FBI had all of them, as the lady who owned and managed the place told them. She also told them the other bad news- the beds were queen size- and there was only one per room. Emily and JJ didn't really care, they had shared before and had no real issue with it, but Morgan only barely managed to hide his scowl until she had given them their keys and went back into her office.

"This is going to suck." He sighed. Emily didn't blame him. Reid's sleep talking was annoying and she only had to deal with it when they were on the plane. Morgan dealt with it when they were on cases by using his headphones, but sharing the same bed would be even more annying.

"Says the man who has frequent thrashing nightmares." Reid snapped, looking annoyed that Morgan was once again (even if only referencing it) his sleep talking.

"You have nightmares too." Morgan snapped back.

"Children." Rossi said, only slightly sarcastically. Emily couldn’t blame him- they frequently engaged in prank wars 

Emily got into her room, to find the room just as small as the manager said it would be. "Well, at least this won't be as bad as it is for Morgan and Reid." she snorted, to all appearances playing on her phone. She was actually messing with an app that Eric made that looked like a popular game (which he probably stole so he didn't have to actually make a game. Emily didn't really blame him.) but was actually a scanner for bugs. She got nothing. She dropped her bag on the bed, and walked back out. “Come on, we need to meet with everyone else.” She said to JJ, who looked confused but followed. 

  
  


Emily knocked on Morgan and Reid's door then crossed the hall to knock on Hotch's, not that the thing could really be called a hall, more of an open air closet with three doors leading off of it. Morgan answered first.

"Emily? What's up?"

Emily pushed past him, fingers still tapping at the app, but she got a negative, fortunately. She returned to the entry to see Rossi open his door. Emily slipped past him as well, they were all too startled to stop her. This was where she got the positive reading that she was expecting. The games started blaring victory music, and the little character started dancing around the screen under a sign saying YOU WON. Now it was only a matter of finding the thing.

"Your room is bugged." she told them. The person who bugged them would figure it out when he didn't hear anything anyway, might as well actually say it out loud. It took her only a matter of moments to find the bug where it was stuck behind the old tv. She pulled a stray rubber glove out of her pocket and pulled it off the wall, then went into her room and put it among her clothes, still wrapped in the glove. There, it wouldn't be able to hear anything. She returned to the group and turned her game back on. Nothing.

"I got suspicious when I saw a camera in the chief's office that was pointed at us, and it was clear from how it was positioned and what was around it that it was a new addition put there to watch us. I decided to make sure that we weren't being watched here, but I didn't want to say anything just in case something else was bugged." she explained.

"You have a bug scanner on your phone." Morgan said incredulously

"Yeah, a friend made the app, and he gave it to me when I asked for it."

"I wonder who set it?" Reid wondered, inspecting the area behind the tv.

"Well, that bug is cheap, it could only transmit noises, no camera. A very big contrast to today's game camera. It only has a range of about 100 yards. I don't want to say that I suspect the chief but." Emily frowned. Dirty law enforcement was one of the worst scenarios that she could imagine being in right now.

"I've heard at least 5 times today how much he wants to solve this case, and how much he didn't want us interfering in it. That's a pretty good motive. If he hears us talking about something that lets him put the clues together, he would not only have the arrest, but get one over the dreaded FBI." Hotch said thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not saying put it out of your mind, but let's go to sleep for now, and think about it in the morning. And be careful what you say unless you know that there is no way that anyone can be recording you."

  
  


* * *

Emily woke the next morning before JJ and managed to slip out of the bed without waking her up. She grabbed her go bag and pulled what she needed out of it without dislodging the bug, making sure that it was still muffled enough that it didn't hear anything. She and JJ hadn't talked much after they left the group that night, mostly discussing other things happening in the bureau. They deliberately didn't talk about the case, just in case the bug could still hear them. Emily didn't think that it could- it was a cheap little thing, and it showed no signs of tampering that would have made it more powerful. After she finished getting ready for the day, she pulled the bug out and made sure that it was still inside her glove, then wrapped her scarf around it, before shoving the entire bundle into a large plastic bag. It shouldn't be able to hear anything outside of the bag and it was much easier to carry around, so she could take it with her if she wanted to. She had a feeling that Hotch would probably want to give it to the mayor, to see what he would do about it. If it was the police chief as Emily suspected, it was likely that his career was over. Bugging FBI agents was a crime and it wasn't going to be easily overlooked. Emily would have to bullshit around how she was able to find it, but it would be possible. Emily just hoped that it wasn't the chief after all- she may not like the man, but a serial killer and a corrupt police chief were likely more then this town could handle.

Right as she was ready to walk out the door, JJ's alarm started beeping and JJ whacked it with a tired hand, trying to get it to shut up. "Why is it that whenever I actually get a full night's sleep I'm even more tired then when I don't?" she complained.

"Because your brain is trying to tell you that you actually got a full night’s sleep last night and it wants you to do it more often.” Emily grinned. “Whenever we have a long enough vacation that I have time to have an actually normal sleeping schedule, I’m always way more exhausted after the first few nights of real sleep than I was before the vacation.”

“Why do we do this to ourselves?” JJ yawned.

“For the massively large paychecks that the federal government gives us of course.” Emily said sarcastically. “I’m going to go see if there’s any type of breakfast here or if we have to go find something ourselves.” Emily told her. 

“Ok, I’ll be out in a minute.” JJ said, and Emily slipped out the door. 

She was fortunate in the breakfast offerings- the manager was also the chef of the place as cooked as people came in, which meant that unlike many of the other hotels that Emily had been at throughout her time in the BAU, the food was both warm and good, which was a rarity, sadly. As she ate, the rest of the team trickled in. "I was thinking we should present a preliminary profile today." Hotch said. "We may not have much, but we have to give them something or else the looks are just going to get worse. We'll probably get scoffs and comments, but we get those in a normal case. We'll just get more of them then normal."

"We'll be able to tell which officers support us or not. The ones that are trying not to draw attention to themselves will be the ones that we know that we can trust." Morgan pointed out.

"Maybe, but maybe not." Emily cautioned. "The officer that I was working with yesterday cautioned me that he would have to go along with the crowd when he was in the station. He doesn't agree with the chief, but he can't risk losing his job."

Rossi frowned. "Poor kid. If he does lose his job, between all of us, I'm pretty sure we can get him a job somewhere. There are plenty of grateful cops that we've helped who would happily do it."

They all waited a moment while the owner brought more food out, not wanting to talk about the case and scare her, or talk about the chief, as that would start up the small town gossip machine- though Emily didn't know if she was the type to gossip or not, it was better to be safe then to be sorry.

"Ok, any points you want to consider for the profile?" Hotch asked.

"Do you think he became a stalker out of necessity or does he like stalking?" JJ frowned. While JJ wasn't officially a profiler, she had been with the team for long enough that she was pretty much a profiler in everything other then the certification and the hands on experience. She knew all of the terminology and reasons, but she just hadn't done enough talking to the criminals. Emily knew that Hotch had offered if she ever wanted to get the certification, all she had to do was ask. Emily didn't blame her for not wanting to yet, though. She liked doing the media side of things, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to go any closer to the unsubs then she was now.

"I think it's out of necessity. He messed up his first kill because he wasn't able to stalk the first victim without being noticed. The camera let him know his second victim's patterns, so he was able to kill easier, and without possibly being noticed." Emily said.

"I wonder if he's so careful about being seen because he stands out in some way? A scar or something like that." Reid speculated, frowning into his coffee cup.

"I don't know. It might just be because this is a small town, and the everyone knows everyone thing is strong here." Morgan pointed out.

“Well, we have enough for the preliminary profile, so let's go give that.” Hotch said, looking at them. 

  
  
  


JJ and Emily slipped off after the profile while Rossi was distracting everyone who had questions about his books. Most of the people in the department hadn't read them, but enough had that it was a decent distraction, and even those who hadn't read the books were interested in the answers. The various officers would assume that they were doing things for the press conference, but they actually went across the street to the Town Hall to visit the mayor, who was very surprised to see them but let them into his office anyway.

"Agents, what can I do for you?" he asked.

"We have a bit of a problem, sir." JJ said.

"Oh, dear. Another problem? What is it?"

"Last night I found an electronic bugging device in one of our rooms. None of the other rooms had one. And it was decently well hidden, and hadn't been there for long. We suspect someone put it there in an attempt to listen in on what we discussed about the case." Emily told him grimly.

"Do you think that it was the killer himself?" the shocked man gasped.

"We don't know sir. It might be. But this isn't the same type of technology or the same quality as the camera we found yesterday. Additionally, everything we know so far about this unsub says that he isn't the type to insert himself into an investigation. Especially in a town this small, when he has no real need to, he can just listen to what others say about it in town. In a large city, you can't do that, so a lot of killers insert themselves into an investigation, just to know what is happening, and what the cops know. Here, I'm guessing that based on other similar cases I've been on, that the cops talk to each other, talk to their wives, talk to their friends, and by the end of the day a lot of the town knows what's going on?" Emily said.

"Well, that describes Cliffstone." the mayor sighed. "What do we do?"

"I'm going to send the bug to our evidence tech's in DC, and they are going to do what they can to figure out who it belongs to. When they find an answer, they will tell us." JJ told him.

"Do you have any guesses to whom it might be?"

"We have a few, but we don't want to accuse anyone without evidence." Emily said, trying to be diplomatic. She had no problems with accusing high profile people, she just didn't want to accuse someone (the chief) and be wrong.

"Thank you for telling me, ladies. If you need anything else, just come back, and if I'm in a meeting, tell my secretary.” he said, and escorted them out of the room. 

They returned to the police station and went back to working on the profile like nothing had even happened. It wasn't long before all of the phones in the room started ringing.

"Oh no." Emily sighed.

"Here we go again." Reid agreed.

"New victim, Stephen White." Officer Miller told them.

"Ok, Reid and Emily, to the crime scene with me. Rossi, I want you and JJ to work on the press. try and keep them from learning about the new victim for as long as you can, although it wouldn't surprise me if half of the town was listening in on the police scanners, so don't be surprised if they already have learned about it. Go with the standard no comment if they bring up the next victim. No matter what, don't let them drag you into some inflammatory comment. We don't know enough about the unsub yet to piss him off. You know the basics, though. Morgan, I want you to work with Garcia, see if this new kill has ruled out anyone on her list of suspects." Hotch told them.

Morgan nodded, Rossi looked annoyed (he hated dealing with the press, but as the most well known member of the team, he was the person that was most often thrown to the wolves. Emily was just glad that she had never had to do it.

"Let's go." Hotch said, and they all made their way to the door, with Detective Blake following.

  
  


The scene was just a slightly more bloody version of the previous ones. There was an unlocked door hanging open, the key still in it, then a clean house until you got to the living room, which was covered in blood. The victim was lying on his back, with a knife still stuck in his chest.

"He stabbed him from the front this time, he's gaining confidence." Hotch said.

"And look where he is- the exact center of the room. He didn't get attacked here, he was attacked right there-'' Reid said, pointing to a spot a little in front of a recliner. Emily frowned.

"It looks like he was sitting in that chair when he heard the door open, but because it was all the way back, the victim had a hard time getting out of it, and by the time he did, the unsub was already in the room. He had no time to run, or fight." Emily sighed. The poor man was relaxing in a place that he felt safe, and he died because of it.

"Guys!" one of the CSI team rushed into the room. "The victim had security cameras. It's fuzzy, but we have a video of him!"

They all rushed into the office where the man had come from. The man played the video for them. It was, as he said, fuzzy and grey but it was useful to see how the outdoors portion of the attack occurred.

A car pulled up on the camera, and a man stepped out. The camera was far enough away that they couldn't see many details. What kind of car is that?" Reid said, squinting at it.

"Truck, midsize pickup. Older model, but not too old. No more then ten years." The tech frowned "Otherwise known as the thing that half of this town owns." he sighed. "Unless you find a lot more limiters, you aren't going to get anything off of that."

"It's hard to tell, but what color do you think it is?"

"Could be dark grey, could be black, could be dark green." The CSI sighed.

They watched as the man strode up the steps towards the door and the tech again paused the video. "This is the best image of him that we are going to get, until we enhance it more. And with how old this system is, I don't know how much good the enhancement is going to be."

"Ok, what do we see," Hotch frowned

"Older male, maybe mid forties ." Emily said.

"Judging by the stuff around him, he's probably somewhere between 5'10 and 6 foot." Reid added.

"And he is not doing anything that would be of any concern to the neighbors, he's walking casually, like there is nothing wrong." Detective Blake added.

"That is important, as it shows that he can fake normal behavior, even if all he thinks about is his next kill" Hotch said.

They watched as the killer walked over to a plant and grabbed the key. "I watched today's footage, and I didn't see the killer at all. I had other techs look in all of the nearby trees, and there are no cameras hidden. So how did he know where the key is?" the tech said.

"Well, he might know this victim. Maybe no well, but enough to pet sit or something like that." Emily suggested.

"Or what he does for a living is something that would get him in and out of people's homes regularly, like a plumber or something like that." Hotch said. "Let's track down those two possibilities, added to what we noticed about him earlier, and see what we find." he said, and lead the team out.

  
  


"Good job, Baker." Detective Blake said, then followed them.

  
  


* * *

That night they went back to the hotel, discouraged at their lack of progress. It was aggravating- they had learned nothing new about the unsub, or their stalking, and the local police were being downright unhelpful. The team all waited outside their rooms as she scanned first her own room, then Morgan and Hotch's. Fortunately, she found nothing, and the team was all very relieved to hear that. It was kind of creepy to have someone stalking you, especially when dealing with an unsub that stalks people before killing them. The team would be targets, specifically Hotch and Rossi, since it was in their room. However, Emily didn't think that it was him, as the technology was completely different, and the unsub hadn't been bold enough to bug the insides of people's houses yet. Just for caution's sake, she had walked around the property this morning, and she had seen no game cameras in any trees, so it appeared that they were safe, from that angle at least.

They all went to their own rooms, and JJ immediately went into the bathroom. Emily used the opportunity to text Mick, a short message about how the case was going, and agreeing with the text he had sent earlier in the day about the plans for their next date, a few days after Christmas. She was surprised when her phone rang a minute later, and she checked it to see his name.

"Hey, I didn't think that you would be up." She smiled.

"I was in the middle of a movie marathon, since I don't have to work tomorrow, barring anything catastrophic happening. Knock on wood." he said, and she could hear him doing the action as well, which made her laugh.

"Hopefully, the criminals all decide to be normal people during the holidays, and we get a bit of a break." she said, also knocking on her nightstand, though calling it wood might be a bit of a stretch.

"How's the case?" he asked.

"Frustrating." Emily grumbled. "We don't have any more substantial evidence then we had yesterday, just theories that the unsub could easily disprove with his next kill. I think we are all hoping that he messes up with the next kill. He hasn't killed since we got to town, and the pressure of the FBI leaning over his shoulder might be enough to throw him off. He hasn't had much to stop him from killing before, and now he does. Although it doesn't help that everybody knows everybody and Jim couldn't possibly be a serial killer, he's so nice!" she said.

"Small town?" he grinned.

"Decently sized, for this area. Has a decently large police force, though they seem to be pretty incompetent, or at least their boss is, so they all have to be."

"If the boss is that worried about covering his ass, then why did he call you guys? To appear like he was doing something?"

"Nope. The Mayor called us, and trust me the chief of police is not happy about that idea. He really doesn't like us, and doesn't like that we might solve the case and take the glory away from him." Emily sighed, thinking about how much of a problem the unsub had been from the very start.

"Damn, babe, I'm sorry." he said, then yawned.

"Yeah. I just hope we will find something before he kills again. And I hear that yawn, so I'll let you get some sleep."

"You get some sleep, too. I'll see you soon." He said.

"Yeah, goodnight." Emily said, smiling.

"Goodnight." he said, and hung up. Emily flopped backwards on the bed. She was grinning like a kid in a candy store. What was it about Mick that made her feel this way? She heard JJ open the door and she quickly schooled her expression into something less happy, but it was too late.

"Mick, huh?" JJ grinned knowingly. Emily sighed. Ever since they had gone on the date, JJ and Garcia had been hassling her, trying to figure out all of the minute little details. Emily didn't mind too much, after all when JJ finally admitted that she was dating Will, she and Garcia had hassled her for the details for hours while getting her drunk so that she would spill more. Emily was just glad that there was no alcohol here.

"Yeah." Emily said, seeing no point in trying to deny it.

"You guys went on another date a few days ago, right?"

"Yeah, a few hours before we got called in on this case." Emily said.

"And?"

"And it was a good date." she said. "We fit together well from what I've seen so far, and we understand each other's hours. It seems to be going fine so far."

"That's good." JJ smiled. "Given the amount of terrible dates that you have had and complained about, I'm glad you finally found someone who wasn't bad. And he has a gorgeous accent and a gun."

"It seems that we all have a type- crime fighters." Emily grinned. "Garcia and Lynch, you and Will, and so far, maybe Mick and I."

"I never realized that. We do." JJ said. "I wonder if it is because the hours of the job make a relationship with anyone who doesn't understand what we do hard?"

"I don't know. I mean, I've dated other law enforcement members before, and we always failed for some reason or another." Emily sighed. She hoped that she and Mick wouldn't fail. From what she had seen, she liked the man, and she was getting a bit tired of the endless dating.

"Well, with all luck, we'll all survive." JJ sighed. "I think I'm going to go to bed now. It may be earlier then normal, and this unsub hasn't struck at night yet, but I'd like to try to get a normal night's work of sleep on a case." she snorted.

"Tell me about it." Emily rolled her eyes. "Every time I actually sleep through the night on a case without getting a call about a dead body I'm always so happy, and it's sad that my standards are so low."

"And days off are amazing, especially when you have more then two. You can at least try to normalize your sleep schedule."

"Normal sleep schedule? What's that?" Emily grinned, moving towards the bathroom to take her turn, as JJ crawled into bed. By the time that she got out, JJ was already deep asleep and didn't even stir as Emily moved around the room. Emily quickly fell asleep- JJ was right, sleep was precious on a case. 

  
  


* * *

For Emily, the fifth victim was the worst yet. The scene was just as bloody as the others, but it was different. The victim had survived. The unsub had finally failed at making sure the house was empty before he attacked. So when he broke into the house and started killing the father, his teenage son heard the commotion and burst in to try and stop the killer. Fortunately for the son, when the killer saw the son he ran away rather then killing him too. The son was left to call 911 and hope that they got there in time.

At the moment, it wasn't looking too good for the dad. He was unconscious by the time the ambulance got there, and the paramedics said a lot of bad things over the amount of blood that he had lost. It would be a miracle if he survived. The son had also gone to the hospital, partially because he refused to leave his father's side, and partially because of the shock that he was in. When he realized what had happened and what he had seen, the paramedics wanted him with doctors. The kid apparently had a history of panic attacks and if seeing your father almost killed by a serial killer wasn't going to induce one, then nothing would. Even as the ambulance was leaving he already looked pretty shaky.

Rossi looked over the scene with an experienced eye. "Tell JJ to really emphasize locking doors and removing your hidden key until we catch this guy." he sighed. "I'd rather a bunch of people get locked out and have to call the locksmith then another kill."

"The door was unlocked?" Emily said incredulously, she couldn't believe that someone had left their doors unlocked. In a small town that had a serial killer in it. When you fit the victim type perfectly- even if they hadn’t released that information yet, this was a small town. People were bound to be talking and had figuring things out.

"Yes." Hotch sighed "Admittedly, it looks like the victim went outside to get something from his car, then forgot to lock it after, but still he should have been more cautious." 

"I will never understand how people always think that it won't happen to them. We live in such a nice area, nothing like this has ever happened in the family, it couldn't possibly happen to us." she said sarcastically. 

"And then it happens." Rossi sighed. He was once again inspecting the blood spatter patterns like the would jump up and tell him who the killer was. It looked like they had gotten smeared when the unsub had made his escape. Because of that, there were a few shoe prints that had made the CSI team fairly excited when they saw them. While Emily didn’t think that a shoe print would be the thing to catch the killer, it put them one step closer to finding him. And when it came to prosecution, if he still had the shoe when they caught him, it would be fairly easy to prove that it was his shoe in the blood. And anything that helped the prosecution of serial killers, so they had to spend the rest of their entire lives in jail, Emily was in favor of. 

“It looks like he’s getting more theatrical when he’s stabbing people. Taking more enjoyment in it.” Reid said. “Look at this blood spatter. It’s all over the place. But the victim was only stabbed, what, 4 or 5 times?”

“So the unsub is deliberately trying to get blood everywhere?” Emily questioned. “I mean we’ve seen weirder things happen, but really? That’s rare.” 

“I know, but how else do you get this much blood everywhere when none of the hits was arterial, and the victim didn’t bleed out here.” Rossi pointed out.   
  


“It’s definitely something that we need to consider.” Hotch said, finally abandoning his poking at the computer to let someone from the CSI team take his place. 

“So how do you think that it would affect the profile?” Emily asked.

“Well, he’s clearly devolving.” Hotch said. “He’s probably going to be more impulsive, and more likely to just snap and start killing people in the middle of the street, without regard for his MO. 

“Do you think that Edward Bailey was a target, and the unlocked door was luck, or was he looking for vulnerable people?” Rossi questioned “Given what we know about him, I’d say the first, but that’s a lot of luck.” 

“It could be either.” Reid shrugged. “It could be a combination of both. We know it can’t be completely random, because all of the victims have kids. But he can’t stalk his victims like he used to now, because his kill rate has sped up so much.” 

“Ok, let's meet up at the police department with the rest of the team, and go over what we know. Hopefully, between us and Garcia, we can find something that will catch this guy.” Hotch said.

  
  


* * *

No matter what, Emily was determined to catch this killer before Christmas. She might not have plans for Christmas, just opening whatever people had sent her, and her usual hot chocolate and Christmas movies, watching the Capitol lights from her window but she certainly didn't want to be here. Catching a killer on Christmas was like the exact opposite of holiday spirit. And it would be a shame if Hotch missed Christmas with Jack. She had already given up on being able to go the the BAU's normal Christmas Eve party at Rossi's house, but he had said on the plane to the case that if they weren't able to make it home in time for that, that he would just postpone it until New Years Eve, and they could all come and celebrate together then. Considering that the team usually didn't do anything together for new year's, other then the one time that she, JJ, and Garcia had met up in a bar and had immediately decided to never do it again, she was perfectly fine with that. And it would keep her mother from trying to make her go to her annual shindig. While her mother had given up hope on getting her to go to anything other then the Christmas party, it didn't stop her from sending the invitations and commenting on who would be there that she wanted Emily to meet. Emily kind of wished that her mother would be given another foreign posting- it would get her out of Emily's hair and give her something to do other then bug her.

Still, she had a feeling that this case was not going to be easy to solve- they had very little clues and a combative police force. Hotch was right when he said that this one was going to be difficult.

"Ok, team" Garcia's voice from her speaker interrupted her thoughts. "I've gone through everything that you've given me and have absolutely nothing. Nada. An extreme absence of something. And you have to admit that is rare. So is there anything in that list that you think might be questionable so I can take it off my set of parameters, to see if we have something then?”

“Well, let's start with age. That’s always the hardest to guess anyway.” Hotch sighed. 

“Hey Garcia, maybe try looking for men who don’t work in the middle of the day- either men who have jobs that they control their own schedule, or some kind of work from home thing. Maybe night shift work. This killer is able to go and kill in the middle of the day because that’s when his victims are home, maybe it’s also why he is home. Otherwise he’d have a very mad boss at this point.” Emily suggested. 

“These kills aren’t something you can do on your lunch break.” Rossi added.

“Right. List of men who have very lenient jobs, or don’t have jobs at all.” Garcia said, and furious typing was heard through the speaker. “I’m going to reapply my filters and when I think that I have found something, I will hit you back.” she said and the phone beeped off. The rest of the team immersed themselves back into the crime scene pictures and reports, hoping to find something that they had missed before that would break the case. 

  
  


Emily looked up as her phone rang about an hour later. She wasn't expecting anyone to call her, and everyone who probably would were all sitting in front of her. The number was one from Quantico. "This is Agent Prentiss." she said.

"Hi, Agent Prentiss, this is David Cook from the Quantico labs. I got the results from the fingerprinting that you requested. The print belongs to a journalist who lives in." he paused and she heard some papers shuffling "Cliffstone, Montana. He has no previous violations, the print was taken during a thing for journalists about 10 year ago. I can send everything about him to your email if you would like."

"That would be awesome, thank you." Emily said, then recited her FBI email. After he confirmed that he got it down, she said bye and hung up. She only barely resisted the urge to slam her head down onto the table. The team was all watching her, curious.

"The bug had the fingerprints of a local journalist on it." she sighed.

JJ groaned. "Morons. Why can they never wait for me to actually give them the information."

"For this one, I think that he wants to figure out who the killer is before the FBI and scoop us. What he's going to do with that information, I don't know." Morgan sighed. "Put an article about it in the paper maybe? That would get him killed so quickly. He wouldn't even have to fit the killer's type for him to be killed, the unsub would do it in an attempt to make sure that he wasn't caught."

"Ok. JJ, Emily and I will go talk to this journalist. Everyone else, keep working on the profile.” Hotch said. 

One hour later, and they were back, with the journalist in handcuffs. Hotch looked like he was enjoying throwing him in a cell, and Emily didn't blame him. It was an awful feeling, knowing that you were being followed. Fortunately, the journalist confessed to the bug in the hotel and the one in the chief's office the second they flashed their badges at him, so they wouldn't have any problems trying to make sure it could be proven that it was him. Emily handed him some paper and a pencil, and the terrified man started writing out his confession.

They went back to the rest of the team and continued working on the profile, not a moment too soon, as they quickly got another call. It was Garcia. Emily just hoped that she had good news. 

“I got him.” Garcia said triumphantly. “Lucas Hudson, age 47. Had a son that died because he wasn't with him- he’s a security guard at the local hospital, works nights. His son was 3, got home from school and Hudson fell asleep in his chair, and the kid got into the cleaning supplies. Mom was at work at the time, and found the kid when she got home from work to find Hudson asleep. They were having marriage problems before this, got a divorce just weeks after the kid died. Kid died a year ago, the same day as the first victim did."

"Good job, Garcia." Hotch said, looking around the room at the team and the surrounding cops. A few of the local cops had looked like they wanted to protest when Garcia said the name, but as she kept talking, they all kept their mouths shut.

"I'll send you everything I have on him." Garcia chirped, and hung up. Their phones all dinged moments later.

"JJ, make this man famous." Hotch said. "Morgan, I want you to organize the department's response to this. Everyone else, to the unsub's house. It's only 10, we might be early enough that he could still be here."

The team all started grabbing their vests, along with all of the officers that had been close enough to hear, including Officer Miller and Detective Blake. As they ran out the door, she saw the chief come out of his office, looking confused at why everyone had just run out the door. She wished Morgan luck with dealing with him, she certainly didn't want to do it.

She slid in the passenger seat of Officer Miller's car as Hotch went for the SUV that they had come up in, leaving the other one for JJ and Morgan if they needed it. Rossi slid into the back of Miller's car, and once the door was closed, Miller sped off. The drive to the unsub's house only took a matter of about ten minutes, and it kind of annoyed Emily that he had been so close this entire time.

The property was deserted. The house, the sheds, the barn. All of them were completely empty. The group regathered by the cars to go over what they knew. The radio of Miller's car, turned to the local radio station, was already broadcasting JJ's press conference.

"Hopefully someone will be listening to the radio and see him and call it in." Hotch sighed, looking over the property. "It's clear that the unsub left here like he normally would. There was nothing out of place, so we know that he doesn't think that we are on to him. I want all of the local officers who can to go and patrol the areas that we thought he would hit next, looking for him. Until they see him or someone calls in a tip, we'll look through the house to see if we can find any clues." he ordered and everyone split up, with Officer Miller the only local cop who stayed with the team.

30 minutes later, they got the call.

The thing about this killer that struck Emily as odd was how he refused to give up. They had his name, his face, and his vehicle, and they were getting blared out to every new station in Montana. But he was still trying to kill, even though everyone in the town was on high alert. They were getting calls every time he stepped onto a street, and then the next street would call when he went there. Emily grabbed the oh shit bar as Officer Miller made a particularly sharp turn, the tires squealing their protest. Somehow the officer was keeping the car exactly at its limits. If he pushed any harder, the car would probably spin out, but they were going as fast as the roads allowed him to go.

"There's a new report." Morgan said over the radio. He sounded stressed and pissed. Emily didn't blame him- he was stuck in the police precinct, when he wanted to be out here. Emily had learned how much he hated that when she was in LA, and it had to be worse when it was your own team that you were listening too. "He entered a house. 368 Whitman Street. Go get him guys."

"Thanks Morgan." Hotch said over the radio. Looking back behind them, Emily could see Hotch fighting the SUV he was driving to keep up with Officer Miller. Despite the FBI issue car being arguably the more powerful of the two, the police car kept ahead thanks to the knowledge of the roads that Miller had.

"We're about 2 minutes out." Officer Miller said, and Emily repeated it over the radio.

"Hopefully that will be soon enough." Rossi sighed from the backseat. Emily risked a glance back, and he looked like he was trying to will the car to go faster. 

No matter what they were going to catch him. Emily thought. He was known by the entire state, and everything that they knew about him said that he didn't have an escape plan. She didn't think that he had the skills to alter his appearance enough to even try to fool anyone. And while a bread would be a great disguise, he didn’t have enough time to grow one out, and glasses by themselves weren't enough to fool anyone. Add to that, if they didn't catch him when they got to the house, they would blast his face nationwide. All of the border crossings into Canada were on high alert. He wouldn't hide for long. No matter what happened, they would catch him, Emily kept reassuring herself. 

It seemed like it took hours to get to the house, though it was less then the two minutes that Officer Miller predicated. Emily swung out the second the car stopped moving, and Rossi was only milliseconds behind her. They used the car for cover, guns pointed at the house until the rest of the team joined them, then ran to the house. 

The door was swinging open, but this one looked like it had been kicked in, not the normal unlock with the key method. Clearly, this homeowner had taken some steps to protect himself, and the unsub fell deeper into a rage when his usual methods weren't there. At least the door wasn't unlocked, and the victim got some warning. She just hoped that he had been aware enough to know to take it. 

They filed through the door as silently as they could, splitting up into pairs to clear the house. Reid and Rossi went to clear the outside, while Hotch and Detective Blake went into the house, with Emily and Officer Miller going through the kitchen and into the dining room. After they cleared those, they opened the door to the garage. 

"Put your hands in the air!" Officer Miller yelled, being the first in. Emily followed him, to see the unsub holding a man hostage with the knife at his neck. From the spreading stain on his chest, he had already been stabbed once. There was also blood dripping from where the knife was up against his neck, but Emily couldn’t tell if it was coming off the knife from the stab wound or not. 

“No way in hell!" the man shouted back.

The shouting told the rest of the team that they found him, and Emily could hear them running in her direction. She stepped to the side, so the rest of the team could come through the door, even though it looked like an escape route for the killer. Even if he took advantage of the hole, he would have to let go of his hostage to go through it, and there were multiple steps between him and the door. The second that he let go of the hostage, Emily would shoot him. She tried edging to the side to see if she could get a clear line of fire, but the unsub swiveled to get himself in a better protected area. It protected him from both Emily and Officer Miller. The only hole in his spot that would have a clear shot was from outside, using a window. Emily hoped that Rossi and Reid used the hole, but she didn't know what was outside that window. If it was something like a bush, there would be no way to even get to the window.

The rest of the team appeared behind her. Their approach seemed to enrage the unsub even more. "Go away! Go away before I kill him!"

"Sorry, but we can't do that." Hotch said in that calming way that he talked to unsubs- the way he made them believe that he was on their side, despite having his gun pointed at them. Emily had always been slightly envious of that ability. Although, she kind of made up for it in the way that she could distract an unsub, for some else to take the shot, usually Morgan or Hotch.

With that in mind, she spoke up "We have you surrounded. There is no way out. Surrender now and nobody gets hurt."

"Nobody gets hurt! Nobody gets hurt! Bitch!" he screamed. He pulled the knife away from the victim's throat, and shoved the man to the side. He took one step towards her, and she and Hotch fired as if they were one person. The bullets hit perfectly, Emily's at his heart, Hotch's on his head. He fell over dead. Emily paid no attention to him after she confirmed that he was dead, and instead rushed towards his victim, putting pressure on the gut wound while checking the cut on his throat. It wasn't very deep, but it would need a stitch or two. It was also minor in comparison to the gut wound which was bleeding heavily.

"Page EMS." She snapped, grabbing the man's jacket from where it was laying on the floor, probably from when the unsub surprised him, and used it to get the blood seeping through her fingers to put more and better pressure on the wound.

"I had them go on standby when the house number was called in. They were posted a block away, and now that the suspect is down, they are on their way here" Detective Blake said.

“Good.” Emily said. She heard sirens approaching, and within minutes, the paramedics were in the room. They quickly got the victim onto the stretcher and had him in the ambulance. “Who is he?” she asked Officer Miller.

“Howard Richards, he has three kids, works at a local bookstore. Today is his day off.” he said. She raised an eyebrow, not expecting that much information without him having a chance to look it up. “My girlfriend works at the same bookstore.” he blushed. 

“Well, she’s going to be working a lot of overtime these next few weeks.” Emily told him. She was carefully not considering the amount of blood on the floor. She didn’t want to contemplate what she could have done differently and what she could have changed. He hadn’t died. He was on the way to the hospital. And hopefully, there would be one more Christmas miracle, and he would be fine and back to work in a few weeks. And just in time for Christmas, it was time to go home. 

* * *

“So guys, what was your favorite or funniest time that you were working on the holidays?” JJ grinned as she looked around the table. She was sitting next to Emily, and they were across from Morgan and Reid. Hotch and Rossi were at the little table in the front of the plane, working on paperwork, but judging by the stopping of the paper shuffling, they were listening. 

“Oh, if I’m going to talk about that, I’m going to need more alcohol.” Rossi grinned as he got up and moved towards the front of the plane. 

“This is going to be good.” JJ grinned. Any story that had Rossi reaching for alcohol was bound to be a good one. 

Rossi returned with a glass in his hand, and sat down on the couch before taking a long sip. Hotch didn’t move, but Emily could tell he was listening. “So, back in the early days of the BAU, when we still worked out of the basement, with bad lighting and no real heating, I had just divorced Carolyn and Gideon had divorced his wife the year before that, and we were both looking for a reason to not go home for Christmas. I argued with Gideon on that, he had a son, and I knew Steven would be heartbroken if he didn’t get to see dad on Christmas, but that contrary bastard ignored Max and I. So we got this case, and I immediately volunteered for it, because I knew that I didn’t want to be home in my empty house all alone, so a case was better then that. So Gideon and I went off on the case, Max stayed home with his kids for once.”

“Did the case run through Christmas?” Emily asked, wincing.

“Yep. You all should be glad that this one didn’t.” Rossi snorted. 

“Hey I’m just glad that I managed to miss my mother’s annual gala, I hate those things.”

“Gala?” Morgan said.

  
“Stupidly long party with rich important people, a lot of whom think they are more important then they really are, many of which have wandering eyes, and when drunk enough, hands. I usually hide in the back of the room with a few high up military people who Dad is friends with, bitching about the other guests. Hell, one of them texted me complaining that it was terrible and that the bitching was much less entertaining because I wasn’t there to profile people.”

“I remember those galas. Trust me, the FBI agents who had to be there hated them just as much.” Hotch said, wincing. “When I was last there, I hovered against the wall near your group of military members and I had to fight to keep a straight face at some of the things that you all knew about the others.” he snorted. 

“I mean that doesn’t really surprise me. Between the group of us, there usually a couple of counter intelligence specialists, a few former black ops specialists, and a few others who had similar jobs, all of whom got promoted up into desks. Discovering information about stupid polititions is stupidly easy in comparison. Hell, one of that group was my introduction into profiling, and he always liked to teach me how to profile during the stupid parties. I’m just glad that my mother only really expects me to be at the Christmas party now. If I had to go to the rest of them, I would volunteer to go on any case that would get me out of the state.”

“I would hate having to go to those.” Morgan winced.

“Oh, trust me I do. Anyway, Rossi, how long was the case?”

“It lasted until three days after Christmas, and trust me, by the time Jason got home, Stephen wanted to murder him. That was not fun. Anyway, so the case was in Phoenix Arizona, and Jason and I spent the entire case trying not to laugh hysterically in everyone’s faces.”

JJ started snickering “Gideon, laughing hysterically? Please tell me you caught that on camera?” 

“Oh, trust me you’ll see why. And unfortunately, no we didn’t. So, we were in Nevada because an epidemic of stabbings was happening, over 10 people were in the hospital. Now, with that sort of numbers, if that’s how many people survived being attacked by him, he had to have dozens of kills, right?” Rossi smirked “Nope. Not a single one of his victims died. Now, normally we would say that the stabber has some sort of medical training, and is deliberately not killing people, but an examination of the stab wounds showed that this man had no skill with a blade, there was no way he had any kind of medical training. He was just horribly unlucky- from his side of things. Now, the victims were amazingly lucky, some more then others. Some of them had organs hit that they will have problems with for the rest of their lives, but they survived, and they were all happy about that, because they didn’t believe they would.”

Rossi stopped and paused for the dramatic effect of it. He was enjoying this, Emily could tell. “Now, this killer we were pretty lucky on getting a face sketch of, because the victims remembered his face really well. He looked absolutely terrifying, and was the type of man who walking down the street, you would look at him and go, that’s the guy who would kill me when I’m walking home in the middle of the night. And we caught him fairly easily, all we had to do was release the sketch to the police, and the man’s mother turned him in.”

“So Jason and I go in to do the interrogation, and this man is probably one of the most stupid people I’ve ever met. He actually thought that he killed all of the victims, and was upset when we told him that he didn’t. He was trying to become America’s next most prolific serial killer, which he obviously failed at. But the funniest part was that he couldn’t comprehend that his mother was the one to turn him in. He refused to believe it, saying that it had to be someone else, his coworker, his ex girlfriend, his childhood friend, anyone other than his mother. And when we informed him that it was in fact his mother that turned him in first, though all of those people all called in too, he started crying in the interrogation room. He thought his mother loved him too much to turn him in like that. And then Jason said ‘Well, you were trying to kill people, what do you expect her to do?’ And the killer never figured out an answer to that, and Jason just scowled and had the unsub taken out. When we went into the interrogation room, half of the police station had cramped themselves in to watch. While we weren’t nearly as well known then as we are now, we were known enough that people wanted to learn how we interrogated killers, and while this unsub wasn’t all that good at that, we were still interrogating him. From the moment we stepped into the room, there were people watching, and throughout the interrogation from behind the glass, we could hear very muffled snickers, and then a bunch of people would shush the laugher, and then it would start all over again. And if we could hear that through the glass, which was designed so that you couldn’t hear what was happening on the other side, it must have been really loud in the room. The second the unsub was taken out, the entire room burst into laughter, and even Jason and I were giggling. This man thought he was going to be the next subject of a serial killer documentary and when he learned that he failed at killing people he was so upset that you kind of just looked at him like how did you manage that? While the consequences of his actions for his poor victims were awful, watching that man in interrogation was like watching a comedy show.”

By this point the entire team was wheezing with laughter. “Anyone else?” JJ asked, after collecting herself.

“Chicago PD was doing the toy drive thing when officers dress up as Santa and elves and stuff, and I was new and young, so of course my name somehow makes it on the sign up sheet, despite the fact that I definitely didn’t sign myself up. So, here I am, in this musty disgusting elf costume that was scratchy and awful, and I was handing presents to kids, right. And this kid walks up to me, on Christmas eve mind you, and says “I can’t believe I got a blue car! I don’t want a blue car! I want a red car! Give me a red car! And so the poor cop playing Santa looked over and said “Well, kid, I thought you wanted a blue car, but if you want we can find you a red car.” I couldn’t believe that he was putting up with the tantrum, especially because there was a sign up list, and each kid had to write a list for Santa, and we made sure that each kid got one thing off their list, so I know this kid had a blue car on that list. Fortunately, we kept a stock of extra of the popular things in the back, so it would be possible, if annoying.” 

“And then, all of a sudden mom comes storming over and goes all “Who are you, why are you talking to my kid. If you don’t get away from my kid I’m going to call the cops!” And I swear you could have heard a pin drop in that room. She was at a Chicago PD event, and her kid was talking to Santa and two elves. Now, most people would realize that the elves and Santa were probably cops, but not this lady. She just kept ranting about how she would sue us for upsetting her kid, and I could see every elf in the room trying to keep from laughing. And these elves are cops- we usually tend to be pretty good at keeping a straight face, if only to deal with the absolute morons that we have put up with on a daily basis.” Morgan grinned, and Emily knew what was coming next was going to be great. 

“And Santa just looked up and said, well ma’am, you are definitely on the naughty list this year.” The entire plane erupted with laughter, Emily had seen many very entitled people in their cases, and had no problem imagining the look on that woman’s face. It had to be hilarious, and Emily was sad that nobody had managed to get pictures.

“Poor Santa.” Rossi snickered. “How bad did he get yelled at?” 

“Actually, she was so surprised that she didn’t even think of anything to say. She just grabbed the kid's hand and drug him out of the building. One of the officers who was actually in uniform followed them out to make sure she actually left and didn’t key anyone’s car or anything, and they left somewhat peacefully. And the best thing- demanding kid didn’t get the red car, he was stuck with the blue one, which we thought was a pretty good life lesson on how if you ask for something and get it, then you have to live with it, even if it wasn’t what you want now. Santa, though, got teased with naughty list jokes for years afterwards, and though he has since retired, is probably still getting them. I know that the last time I saw him, when I was in town for my mom’s birthday, I gave him hell. Of course, he just threatened to make sure that the pictures of me in an elves costume got sent to my mother, so I promptly shut up. And no, that picture never made it onto the internet, so you can’t have Garcia dig it up.” Morgan finished, obviously noticing the speculative looks half of the plane was giving him, Reid especially. They had only finished their latest prank war a few weeks before, and Emily would help Morgan make sure there was no picture of that costume to be found, if only to keep her from getting covered in glitter or something equally annoying again. The prank war did not need to be resurrected, in Emily’s opinion. And if she was reading Hotch’s face right, he completely agreed with her. Collateral damage was a normal thing in Morgan and Reid’s wars. And he had to get things off his suits more then once. At least the two tended to keep those sorts of pranks for in the office on days that they knew that they weren’t going to get called out on cases. 

  
  


Just then, JJ's phone rang, and she stood up from the table and moved to the back of the plane to answer it. "This is agent Jareau," she said, and Emily forced herself to listen to attention back to the team.

"One time, I was off doing things that I most definitely could not mention, and I was undercover with G Callen, in a country that i can not name, about a month before Christmas. We were undercover as a couple, and even worse, newlyweds. Now, G and I had already discovered that we would absolutely never make it as a couple, so this was hard for us. You can only play lovey dovey couple with one of your best friends without laughing in his face for so long, after all. We were under, trying to discover secrets that are very very classified, and that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part is the apartment complex that we were living in seemed to be the most Christmassy people in the world. G and I were absolutely not prepared to have to be that freaking festive while also trying to steal stuff. I swear, every twenty minutes there was a knock on our door, with a neighbor offering to show us where the best Christmas trees were, or offering to help us with the lights. It was exhausting, as we used the night to steal stuff and meet with our handlers, and there were enough neighbors that we didn't get any uninterrupted sleep during the day. When we finally got extracted, we both slept like logs for a week. it was exhausting." Emily laughed.

"How did you meet Callen?" Morgan asked, curious.

"The long story is probably classified. The short story is that our respective agencies didn't bother checking with each other if they had anyone in a particular place, and sent us both in. He figured out I was an agent, cause I was fairly inexperienced, and once he learned I was American and not from some other county, he helped me and taught me what he could while we were working. We've run into each other on ops a few times after that, as he's a notorious lone wolf, and anyone that he's actually willing to work with, he gets given. And as most of the people he trusts were men at that point, I got on a lot of ops that I'm pretty sure I didn't have the clearance level for at that point. Now, he actually has a team that he works with and more or less stays in the same place, so he's doing better then he was." Emily smiled, remembering all of the times that they had worked together, and how much fun it was. Her last major undercover op kind of killed her for undercover work though. After Doyle, she didn't really want to go undercover much, and had applied for a position in the Chicago FBI office. Doyle had been a hard op, and he was so paranoid that her nerves were fried by the end of the op. By then, profiling in Chicago seemed like a fun vacation. That led her to the BAU, and here she was. She didn’t miss undercover work as much as she thought she would, she liked having a team that was always with her, and not have to lie about what country she was even in, much less what she might have been doing. 

"Hey guys" JJ called as she walked back over. "That was Officer Miller. The last victim got out of surgery. He's going to be fine, and the blade didn't nick anything major, so he only has to stay the night, and as long as the docs think he's doing ok, he can go home in the morning, with a follow up appointment the day after Christmas, so he'll get to be home with his kids, even if he is really drugged up." she smiled.

"Well, that's good." Morgan grinned.

"I didn't think that he would be home for Christmas, so that's better then I thought that he would be." Emily said.

"Speaking of Christmas, if I want to be in any shape to try and drive to Mama's tonight, I need to sleep." Morgan sighed.

"Good luck with that drive." Rossi winced. Emily agreed- traffic in major cities on Christmas eve sucked. She was glad that she was just going to her apartment and had no plans to move until after Christmas.

"Speaking of Christmas, I was thinking that we could invite the other teams if they aren't working, to the annual Christmas Eve party that we moved to New Year’s." Rossi offered. JJ's fingers flew over the tiny keyboard, then her phone seemed to chirp the second that she stopped typing.

“Garcia says that she agrees with that.” JJ grinned. 

"I'm in'' Morgan said as he stretched out on the couch- as much as a man who was over six feet tall could stretch out on that tiny thing anyway. A round of agreements followed, and they all started trying to bed down in the barely comfortable chairs, trying to get whatever sleep that they could. Hotch passed out faster then she had ever seen him- though he did have a small child to deal with in the morning who was old enough to know all of the magic of Christmas, and JJ wasn't far behind him, even if Henry was a bit young to be really excited by anything more then the colors and lights. Emily was the last person awake, though she too fell asleep and didn't wake until the plane touched the ground in DC

  
  


The next morning dawned cold and clear, though there was enough snow dusting the ground that it could be called a white Christmas, though Emily didn't know if it would last the day. She spent some time with hot chocolate on the couch looking out at the lights before she started opening the packages that had arrived on her doorstep while she was out on the case. The first one didn't have a shipping label on it, and Emily didn't have many friends that were in town enough to deliver a present personally, so she was curious and opened it first.

It contained a little statue of a palm tree. There was only one person who could have given it to her- Mick. She was glad that she had sent his present- a book of major American cities and what they were known for, as a joke, the day before the case. She didn't know if she should get him anything or not as they had only gone on two dates, but they were dates that had gone really well, and he had spent a lot of time with her while they were on the case together. 

She had lingered over the boxes for a little while longer, until her phone started ringing. She went to go get it and smiled when she saw Mick's name. "Hi, Merry Christmas." she smiled.

"Merry Christmas." he said "I got your package, thanks! Did you talk to my team about it?"

"No," Emily laughed. "I saw it and thought it was funny, I didn't plan with anyone about it. I'm assuming that they all got you similar things?"

"Yeah, Beth got a book about American presidents, Sam got a book about American politics, Gina got a little statue of the Lincoln monument, and Prophet got a football hat. He was trying to annoy me, rugby is so much better." he scoffed, and Emily laughed.

"Whatever you do, don't ever let Morgan hear that."

"He played?"

"In high school, and apparently, he was good enough that he played through college, and could have gone professional if he wanted to. He decided that he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a cop instead." she said.

"That just sounds like a fun argument." Mick said, and she could tell that he was grinning. "I'll have to bring it up at the New Year's Party that Rossi is hosting."

"Oh no." Emily sighed.

"Oh yes." Mick said cheerfully. "Speaking of New Year's, do all of your team know that we are dating?"

"The girls do. I don't know about the men, but we are profilers, so they probably know that I'm dating someone. And no, I have no problems with them knowing." Emily smiled.

"Yeah, I think it would be pretty hard to hide at this point, given that more people know then don't."

"Yeah, and I can just see everyone's reactions to us trying. We would fail in the first five minutes." Emily laughed.

"God, that would be embarrassing." Mick winced. "How many teams will be going to this?"

"Well, I know the IRT will at least get an invite, but they usually get busier during the holidays, because more people are traveling. So it's a coin toss on whether they will make it or not. The other BAU team will, but team 2 is on duty, so they might get a case, and if they get called in team 3 goes on call. It all depends on how busy the unsubs decide to be. My team is scheduled to be on paperwork duty that week, so unless shit really hits the fan, we won't get called in." Emily explained.

"Yeah, Coop said that we would probably be able to make it, but with us being a red cell, who knows. Hopefully nothing bad happens, and we will."

"Yeah, I hope so." Emily smiled "I'll tell the rest of my team about us, so there are no surprises at the party."

"Do you want to go out again in a few days? Unless we get a case, my schedule is about as free as it is possible to be."

"Sure." Emily grinned.

"Cool. I'll text you details later. Merry Christmas, Emily."

"Merry Christmas, Mick." Emily smiled, and hung up. Things were definitely looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, to all of those who celebrate it, Merry Christmas! And to all, Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoyed this behemoth of a chapter, and please review! Thank you!


	8. The Hooks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! This took longer then I thought, sorry! I hope you like it!

Chapter 8

Internet is forever

Winter bled into spring, bringing with it warmer temperatures and Emily was currently cursing it. 

“Babe, it’s ok, you aren’t late.” Mick said, taking a sip of his coffee, watching her rush around his apartment, trying to grab all of her things.

“We work with profilers, Mick. They will notice if I don’t get in at the time I normally do. Because we woke up late, I’m going to be later then normal, and I can’t even blame snow like I did last time.” Emily pointed out, running a hand through her hair, and grabbing the mug he offered her. “At least I have my go bag, or else I would be trying to make a pit stop at my apartment, and then I would be really late.”  
  


“They all know that we are together, anyway.” Mick pointed out after draining the last of his coffee and pulling his leather jacket on.

“It’s one thing for them to know that we are together, but it’s another for them to realize that I spent the night. God. Morgan would never stop the jokes. And Garcia would be just as bad.” Emily said, running a quick eye over his apartment, then picked up her go bag and followed him out the door. 

“Well, then good luck.” Mick smiled and kissed her. “Dinner tonight if neither of us gets a case?” he asked. 

“I think JJ was watching a few cases that are maybes, so I don’t know, but hopefully yes. I’ll text you either way.” Emily smiled at him while tossing her go bag in the trunk of her car. 

“Well, then have a good day at work, and I’ll see you when I see you.” Mick said, leaning in for one more kiss.

“You too.” Emily smiled at him, getting into her car, and they both left for work. 

* * *

  
  


Despite her earlier despair, traffic was surprisingly good, and she managed to get to work only a few minutes after her normal time. That meant that by the time the rest of the team arrived (except for Hotch, who as normal looked as if he had spent the night in his office, she sometimes wondered how early he got up and what time he got in to work.) Emily was already at her desk and working on a consult. 

“Hey Prentiss, what are you working on?” Morgan greeted her as he walked in, with Rossi following him in. Reid was conspicuously absent, and he was usually earlier then this, too. 

She grimaced “A cop in way over his head. But not bad enough to warrant out involvement.”

“I hate cases like that. You want to help, but we can’t and it would be a waste of our time if we did fly out. What is it?” Rossi sighed

“A family annihilator in a very small town in Iowa. First murder in over a decade level of small. Husband is conspicuously not with the dead bodies of his wife and kids, and has tons of motive, but it can’t be him, he is such a good man!” Emily ended sarcastically. 

“Of course not.” Morgan sighed. “And the crime scene team can’t even really search for his DNA, because he lived in the house, his DNA is everywhere.” 

“And he’s probably out of the state by now.” Emily concluded. “I’m writing this up to try and convince the cop that it’s the husband, and not whatever poor person that he is convinced that it is, considering that the ‘suspects’ that he lists are and I quote: the town drunk, the man who came back weird from Vietnam, and the wife’s high school boyfriend who is now happily married with three kids and one on the way.” she scoffed. 

“Good luck with that one” Rossi sighed and continued up to his office.   
  


Derek moved to his desk, and started on his own paperwork while Emily finished writing her firmly worded suggestion that the cop should look further into the husband and definitively rule him out if nothing else. She was surprised when she glanced up and Reid wasn’t there yet. “I wonder where Reid is?” She wondered out loud.

“Technically, we don’t have to be here until the briefing at 9.” Morgan pointed out. “We just all come in early because it’s easier to come in early to do paperwork then have to stay really late to finish it.

“Yeah, but when is Reid ever late?” Emily said and Morgan shrugged. 

It was even more surprising at 8:55 when JJ and Garcia walked by, and Reid wasn’t there yet. Emily sighed- Garcia being there meant that they had a case- no dinner with Mick tonight. She and Morgan followed up to the conference room, collecting Rossi on the way, with Hotch appearing out of his office a few seconds later. 

“Where are we going?” Morgan asked with a sigh. He probably had a date planned tonight. Emily had only barely repressed her own sigh. She would much rather have to do paperwork all day, then go on a date with Mick then go on a case. 

JJ clicked a button and a face appeared on the screen “This is Doris Archer, she’s the third woman to go missing in Boise Idaho this year, along with Paula Renmar and Samantha Rush. They went missing roughly two months apart. Well hello.” JJ said, distracted from her briefing. Emily turned around to see Reid with a new haircut. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the rest of the team watching as well. 

“What, did you join a boy band?” Hotch asked dryly. 

“No.” Reid said, confused as the rest of the team started snickering. 

Emily chucked, then said “So what are we looking at here? Late 20s early 30s.”

“All single, though two are in committed relationships. All living on their own.” Rossi said, flipping though that papers in the file

“Looks like normal suburban houses. Gives the unsub privacy.” Morgan commented. 

“The differences are more striking then the similarities. Different hair colors, different body shapes.” Reid said, and Emily nodded, agreeing.

“What do we know about his M.O?” Hotch asked.

“That’s why we were invited in. The abduction sites are pristine.” JJ told them.

“And there’s no DNA beside the victims, and there’s no sign of forced entry or a struggle.” Morgan said.

“And the victims aren’t reported missing until two ore three days after they’re abducted.” Emily added. 

“Two or three days- women like this don’t just vanish without somebody noticing.” Rossi said, looking down at his file. 

“Yes. Which is why I asked Garcia to dig into their lives,” JJ said, pointing her remote at Garcia.

She took the cue, tapping on her computer and making some websites pop up on the screen. “And when I took a look at their online activity, I could easily see how the unsub is doing it.” 

“Social networking sites.” Emily said, looking up at the screen.

“Yeah. Facebook, twitter. You name an online life sharing time suck, the victims were on it. And if you look at each of their last posts, they say kind of the same thing, going out of town, going on a business trip, going on vacation. But when you look at the time and date stamp of each of these, cue the twilight zone music because they were all posted the morning after each of them went missing.”

“The unsub posted them.” Hotch said, frowning at the screen.

“Social networks are an easy way for an unsub to target his victims. These women were especially open. They posted everything from what they were having for dinner to where they were going on dates.” Reid said, looking around the table.

“So this unsub friends his victims and then uses that as a cover once he lakes them.” Morgan guessed, looking at the pictures of the victim’s houses. 

“That means he can hack into their accounts, so he’s excellent with computers.” Emily said, and Garcia nodded. 

“Definitely profiles as patient and organized. He’s obsessive enough to remove all forensic details, but also patient enough to wait around two months before abductions.” Reid said.

“He can afford to be. He gets three days to do whatever he wants to these women.” Rossi sighed.

“That means we need to assume that these women are already dead. The question is what does he do when he has them.” Hotch said, looking up at the screen with the pictures of the victims smiling down at them. 

“I wonder where he hides the bodies?” Emily frowned, looking at the pictures of the victims' houses. It felt weird to be in a briefing and not have pictures of bodies to look at. 

“There are a lot more places in large cities that you can hide a body in then most people think.” Reid said. “It could be as easy as digging a hole in a backyard, or hiding the body in the floorboards of a house, like the British serial killer, Dennis Neilson. However, Neilson later disposed of the victims either by bonfire or chopping them up into small pieces and flushing them down the toilet before the smell could give him away.” 

“You would have to have no sense of smell and very far away neighbors if you wanted to do that.” Morgan winced. 

“We will find the bodies when we get there. Wheels up in 45 minutes.” Hotch said, and the usual scramble to grab everything that they needed and get out the door began. For what felt like the millionth time, Emily was glad that they all drove their own cars to the airport (expect Reid, who usually hitched a ride with whoever was ready to leave when he was) because that meant that she could just leave her go bag in the car all day and not have to lug in and out of the FBI building, regardless if she needed it or not. 

They all left for the airport and it wasn’t until the plane was up in the air that they started discussing the case again. “So if this unsub is using social networks to find his victims, can’t we use that to find him?” Morgan suggested. 

“Yeah, if these women each had 100 friends following them, then the unsub would pop up in each of their lists right?” Emily questioned. She had never had any type of social media, so it was really a guess based on what she did know. 

“Uh, the Detective in charge, John Fordham, he looked into their groups, everyone checked out.” JJ said, shaking her head.

“Social networking sites are surprisingly insecure. Facebook recently tried to update their privacy settings, and in doing so, they made everybody’s profiles viewable.” Reid said. Emily briefly wondered how he knew that when he hated computers- he didn’t even have an email other then the FBI issued one! But as soon as she thought it she came up with her answer- it was Reid. 

“Can somebody explain to me the appeal of these sites?” Rossi said, picking up a piece of paper out of his file and reading from it. “Getting sushi tonight. Yum. Boss is keeping me late at work. Grr.” His sarcastic tones caused the entire team to fight laughter, though Morgan didn’t seem to be fighting all that hard. “Whose life is so important that we’d be interested in this kind of detail?”

“I don’t know. I guess that's kind of the running joke, right? I mean, nobody is. But we’d all like to believe that there’s actually an audience out there that wants to follow our every move. You know, some sites actually have a GPS feature built in. You can tell exactly where someone is every time they post a new comment.” Morgan said. 

“This is telling us how he’s finding them, but it’s not telling us how he’s getting into their houses.” Hotch pointed out.

“At the very least, I think he had copies of their keys.” Reid said. “Doris Archer had a home security system installed, but the disable code was entered at 1:56 am. So he knew that too. He also found a way to deal with her dog. A German shepherd that she adopted from the pound last year went missing the night that she did.” Emily winced- one was bad enough, but all of it put together? That was about as bad as it could get. The unsub clearly spent time stalking them. 

“All right, so this guys got to be in and out of the house well before the night of the disappearance. He comes up with some ruse, talks his way inside, and then once he’s familiar enough with the house, he knows he can come back and kidnap her without disturbing anything.” Morgan speculated. Emily nodded, it sounded right. She was just amazed that their unsub hadn’t been caught breaking into people's houses before. 

“What about the people who come into your house that you don’t consider a threat? Home repair guys, dog walkers.” Rossi suggested that. 

“Detective Fordham looked into that too. No one even came close to being a killer.” JJ said.

“Ok. Morgan and Prentiss, start with the last abduction sites. See if anything points to his M.O. Dave, you, Reid, and JJ go back over the women’s lives. Start with their friends on their social networking sites. If this is how the unsub is finding them, maybe they’re connected to him without even realizing it. 

* * *

When the plane landed, Emily and Morgan went straight to the house. At first glance, it looked ordinary. At second glance, though, it turned seriously creepy. JJ had called about some pictures that were out of place, and they had apparently found the unsubs first mistake.

“Ok, JJ, I got it.” Morgan said while pinning the phone between his shoulder and his ear and lifting a picture off of the shelf it was on. “Actually, yeah. Looks like he did try to hang something on the wall. There’s even a little residue left over.” He said to JJ, and Emily looked up from where she was inspecting a plant that looked out of place on the stairwell. 

“Morgan.” Emily called him.

“Let me call you back.” he told JJ before focusing on her “Yeah what do you got.”

“Hey, I got one up here, too.” she pointed to the sticky bit of the wall.

“What would he try to hang on that part of the wall?” Morgan asked, looking up the stairs at her. 

She set the plant down and turned to face him “Well, from here I have an unobstructed view of the second floor and down the stairs.”

“It’s the same thing down here” Morgan said as she walked down the stairs towards him. “You can see the entire entrance.” 

“Cameras.” she realized. She had once put up cameras while on an op in pretty much those exact same spots. “He put up cameras.” 

“Shit.” Morgan muttered. “Lets see how many of these marks we can find. Then we can find a camera that’s close to what we have here, and call the rest of the team.” 

The next hour, Emily searched while Morgan went to a local electronics shop to pick up a camera that was as close to the specs as he could find. She was disgusted to find camera marks everywhere from the kitchen to the bedroom, and even the bathroom, pointed directly at the shower! 

  
  


When Hotch and Reid arrived, Reid immediately started wandering through the house, while Hotch met them in the entry to hear what they had found. 

“We think this is what he’s using to spy on his victims” Morgan said, pulling a very tiny camera out of the bubble wrap it had been in. Hotch took the little thing from him and turned it over to see the four little bits of adhesive that perfectly matched the marks on the wall. “They're small, they’re cheap, and they’re easily hidden behind photos, books, and plants.” 

“The footage they record can then be easily transmitted anywhere. Website of your choice, even your cell phone. And he can toggle between cameras to see everything that’s happening in the house. 

“And you found 5 of these at different points in the house?” Hotch asked.

“Upstairs, downstairs, bedroom, even the bath.” Morgan nodded. 

“A ruse gets him in the door, but it doesn’t buy him enough time to put up 5 of these.” Hotch pointed out.”

“Right. That's why we think he starts with one camera facing the front door.” Emily said, absentmindedly watching Reid look at stuff in the kitchen. What was he looking at? They had already cleared the kitchen of anything that might be important to the profile, and other then the weird cookie cutter decorations, there wasn’t really anything interesting in there. 

“That tells him when it's safe to enter the house, when she comes and goes, when the dog walker comes, and what the combination to the house is.” Morgan finished.

“It fits his M.O.” Emily said. “If he learned their every detail on social networks, he will be just as obsessive in his surveillance.”

“And once he learns their routine, all he has to do is pick the lock, put up the rest of the cameras, and boom, he’s got their whole lives at his fingertips.” Morgan said. 

“What does he do with the video?” Reid asked from the kitchen. “Do you think he keeps them?”  
  


“If he’s a voyeur, yes.” Morgan said.

“Uh, voyeurs are rarely violent. Their excitement comes from spying without the object knowing that they were being watched.” Reid pointed out. 

“And by abducting his victims, he’s removing the outlet of his sexual release. Reid is right.” Emily pointed out. “So he must have some other agenda with these cameras.” 

“He might be sharing the footage with other people.” Hotch suggested. “We need to have Garcia dig into surveillance in illegal video websites.” 

“I’m going to take this with us,” Reid said, holding up a picture of the victim and her boyfriend. 

“Why?” Hotch asked, and internally Emily agreed- why did he need a picture when there were already lots of pictures at the station? Along with the half a million pictures the victim posted on all of her social networks, there were ample pictures to choose from. 

“We originally profiled that there wasn’t any facial similarity between the victims but I’m not so sure that’s true. I want to compare Doris Archer’s picture with the other victims.” he told them. Emily shrugged- if he could get a lead out of it, he could take every picture in the house if he wanted to. This guy needed to be caught. 

They left the Archer house, and went back to the station, with Morgan filling in Garcia on the way there. The team spent a little time going over what they knew about voyeurs with the locals, while Garcia talked to Hotch and Rossi in the conference room. Morgan continued talking to the locals while Emily and Detective Fordham joined Hotch and Rossi.

Emily watched as the man walked up the stairs on the screen and looked directly into the camera. “Can you freeze that?” Rossi asked, and Emily hit the pause button, and the video obediently froze. Emily was glad- sometimes the screens in police stations didn’t work and she hated fighting with them. “He’s acknowledging the camera.” Rossi said grimly.

“Tip of the hat to his friends. He knows they're watching.” Emily nodded.

“Classic narcissistic behavior. He’s performing for his audience.” 

“We know the M.O. The question is how. What kind of jobs gives him access to the victim’s houses?” Hotch said. 

“It has to be network and IT, the guy you let in to hook up your internet.” Emily said. With the amount of skill this unsub had shown so far with computers, that had to be it. 

“Gets him in their house and on their computers.” Rossi said. 

“I went through all the women’s internet service providers with a fine tooth comb. They all use different companies, and no overlap with service reps.” Detective Fordham said.

“What about onsite tech support?” Hotch asked. 

“Oh, well, clean as a whistle.” Detective Fordham said, shaking his head. “They all had alibis with no criminal records.” 

“What I don’t understand is why does he take the bodies with him after they are dead?” Rossi questioned.

“It would be one thing if he took them while they were still alive, but he’s accomplished his task. He murders them and completes the performance.” Emily said, puzzled. She didn’t understand why the unsub would take the risk of hauling a corpse around that he might get caught with. 

Rossi said exactly that- “So why take the risk of carrying a corpse to your car?” 

“Well, there must be some sort of postmortem behavior or signature, something that we aren’t seeing.” Hotch guessed.

“Well, think about this for a second. He’s sharing this murder with a crowd of onlookers. What could he be doing to these bodies just for himself?” Rossi said. 

“Hey guys.” Morgan said as he walked in “Garcia’s got something for us. Go ahead baby girl.” 

“Ok, friends, I have some good news, but first, here is the thing that sucks. I located the network that the unsub is using in Boise, and it is the victim's own wireless.” Garcia told them.

“So does he hack in before he starts with the murders?” 

“Hacking is obscenely time consuming. I just make it look easy because I’m a genius. But he’s not me. So my guess is that he has to lurk around their network for at least a couple of days to a week before he kills them.” 

“That’s pretty brilliant on his part.” Detective Fordham said.

“Yeah, he knows when we follow the online paper trail, that it’ll lead us right back to the murder site.” Morgan said. 

“What’s the good news?” Rossi asked.

“Hackers are very loyal to their spoofing techniques, and if they think nobody’s watching, they’ll use the same roads over and over. 

“Ok, so if he goes through Russia, China, North Korea again..” Emily trailed off

“I have flagged those servers, and if he uses them in the same order, I will catch him so fast.” Garcia promised. 

“That's only going to help us if he commits another murder.” Hotch realized, and Emily winced. 

“Yeah, that’s also true.”

“Excuse me.” Hotch said, snagging Morgan’s phone and walking out of the room. She and Rossi went back to the video, trying to find anything that they had missed earlier, trying to find anything that might tell them who he was. It was a relief when Reid walked in with a new theory. She didn’t want to have to watch Doris Archer scream and die anymore. 

“I was staring at the pictures of the victims, and I knew there was a pattern connecting them, but I couldn’t tell what it was until I broke it down mathematically. Why are we so drawn to celebrity faces? Because there is a symmetry to their beauty- the eyes, the ears, the ratio of the forehead to the chin. The more balanced they are, the more appealing they are to our eyes.” Reid explained. 

“These women aren’t celebrities, though.” the detective pointed out. 

“No, but there are similarities between them, and it wasn’t until I scanned their pictures and got it to the guys at Quantico that I got a full breakdown. All right, strip away eye color, hair color, and skin tone, and what are we left with geometrically?” he said as the screen did as he said, leaving outlines of their faces.

“They're all slightly dystopic. The left eye is lower then the right eye on all the victims.” Hotch said and a light slanted across the eyes. 

“All the noses are narrow.” Emily pointed out. 

“The forehead has the same ridge.” Fordham added. 

“He might not even be aware that he sees it in them. There have been studies that suggest that we pick our spouses subconsciously, based on a facial similarity that we recognize.” Reid said. 

“So consciously or unconsciously, when he recognizes it, he had to destroy it.” Rossi said. 

“Which means he only has interest in the bodies as how they relate back to him.” Reid said. 

“Maybe they’re a reflection. Remember what he did at the end of the video?” Rossi said, picking up the remote and getting rid of Reid’s diagram and pulling up the video again. Emily winced- she really didn’t want to see it again. Fortunately, he fast forwarded through it and they didn’t have to watch it again. The video stopped on Doris’ face as the unsub stood over her.

“He wiped the tear away.” Emily said as the unsub did it on the screen.

“Another act of compassion that he’s not capable of. His narcissism prevents him from that.” Rossi argued. 

“In the Greek myth, Narcissus was so self-absorbed that he fell in love with his own reflection in the water.” Reid said for the detective’s benefit, as all of the team had heard this before.

“Exactly. He finds women with the same face, and he strangles them, and then stares at them after they’ve died. But whose image does he really see?” Rossi said.

“His own.” Reid said as Emily frowned. They continued discussing the narcissism angle for a while before focusing back in on the profile, preparing for the press briefing that JJ was going to give. 

When they were ready to give the profile, they gathered the waiting officers and took their places in the front of the room. Emily started “Most of us take the internet for granted. We forget about texts we share, or updates we put on social networks, but the internet never forgets. Once it’s out there, it’s out there forever.”

“Now we all know about the horrific deaths that get shown on the web.” Morgan started up where she left off. “The murder of a journalist. The stoning of an Iranian dissident. Those murders are immortal.” 

“And this unsub craves the same immortality.” Hotch said.

“He recognizes his face on theirs and he kills them as a way of saying “this is what I look like.”” Reid added 

“We think that this also informs his compulsion to take the bodies with him.” Morgan said.

Hotch took up the refrain from where he left off “He takes them to a secondary location where we believe he preserves them, so that every time he looks at them, he sees his own ego reflected.” 

“Fortunately for us, this means that we have a good idea of what he looks like.” Emily said, picking up the sketches and starting to hand them out. “Based on the shape of the victim’s faces, we have a rough composite sketch.”

“This unsub is an expert with computers and home networks. So look into criminal records of men with extensive computer training.” Morgan said. 

“We know you’ve already looked at the victim’s computer IT settings, so we’d like to expand the search. Look into electronic stores, computer distributors, IT departments where the women worked.” Reid listed off possibilities. 

“We overuse the term narcissistic in our culture, but we’re going back to the psychological definition. Every aspect of this man’s life has been constructed around an inflated sense of self.” Morgan said.

“Unsubs like this are particularly vulnerable to what’s called narcissistic injury. If his self worth is attacked or damaged, he will lash out.” Emily explained. 

“So, if you find this unsub, do not challenge him publicly. Say you just want to talk to him. See if he knows anything about the brilliant mastermind who’s stalking these women.” Rossi said. 

“Under no circumstances should you denigrate him. As difficult as it is, we need to talk up his exploits as if we respected him.” Hotch said, and they finished the profile. JJ and Detective Fordham went to talk to the media. 

When JJ came back, it was with bad news- the press had forced their hand, and as the conference went out live, there was no way the unsub hadn’t seen it. It was only a matter of time before the unsub attacked again. 

Emily wasn’t surprised when Hotch rushed in, phone in hand, with the words “He’s going live.” They all gathered around the screen as the livestream popped up. The unsub was running across the street of wherever he was, and Emily winced. That couldn’t be good. 

“Look at the way this guy is moving. That isn’t slow and deliberate. This guy’s pissed.” Rossi said.

“Alright, what do we see? Determining markers?” Hotch said, and Emily frowned, concentrating. It was hard to see anything with how fast the unsub was moving. 

“A one story cottage.” Reid said from where he was watching on the computer behind them. 

“It could be anywhere.” Detective Fordham sighed. 

“Is there a number on the house?” Morgan asked. 

“No, and he’s already at the door.” JJ said. 

“Garcia.” Hotch snapped.

“He’s using twice as many proxy servers.” Garcia sounded stressed.

Then, she noticed it. “Wait. This window here at the bottom- is that the chat room?” 

“Uh-huh.” Garcia said.

“There she is.” Emily winced as the woman appeared on the screen, looking in her refrigerator. 

“He’s in the house, guys,” Reid said. 

“He’s completely changed his MO.” Morgan said. “It’s way too early, there’s too much light, what happened?” 

“Someone asked the wrong question at the press conference.” JJ said. 

“Oh my god. Turn around. Just turn around.” Emily said, shifting from one foot to the other. 

“Maybe she can fend him off.” Morgan said. 

“New kitchen appliances, can we track them through work orders?” Reid said.

“He’ll be gone by then.” Rossi said grimly. 

“Garcia, give us something.” Hotch said as the camera switched to one that showed the unsub hiding behind a counter, only feet away from the women. 

“I’m stateside now, I’m almost to Idaho. I just need more time.” she said, still furiously typing. 

“You’re not going to make it.” Hotch said, and while Emily sympathized with Garcia, she had to admit that Hotch was right, they were running out of time. 

“Yes, I will. Yes I will.” Garcia said.

“Forget the unsub. Can you run a trace on everybody in that chat room.” 

“I can’t do both sir. Let me do this.” Garcia sounded like she was close to tears. 

“Garcia, tag the viewers. That’s an order.” Hotch said, and Garcia did so as they watched the poor women die. They had no way of finding her, so the team waited for someone to report her missing/ the break in, but after a few hours, nothing was reported, so Hotch ordered them all to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before they could start again in the morning. As much as Emily didn’t want to do it, she knew that skipping sleep now would only mean she would be too tired to work when they got closer to catching the unsub. 

* * *

It wasn’t until after they had gotten back to the station in the morning that they got the call. She and Morgan went to the address that she recognized from the video, and she went inside while Morgan talked to Garcia. 

“Her name was Alison Kittridge, 29.” She told Morgan as he walked in. “This was her first house.” 

He glanced around the room and saw the sticky notes that had been placed by the smoke detector where the unsub’s cameras had been . “So this unsub accelerated his timetable and his M.O. He was moving faster because he was angry.”

“Yeah, the press conference told him something about himself that he didn’t like, so he rushed. Which means he made a mistake. Now what was it?” Emily said. 

“Well, it wasn’t the cameras. He remembered to take those with him.” Morgan said, walking into the living room, which caused a pair of gossiping cops to hastily break apart in an attempt to make it look like they were working. She almost wanted to tell them how badly they failed at being inconspicuous, but brushed it aside.

“It wasn’t the body. He took that with him too.” Emily said, wandering around the room, looking for anything that might be out of place. “Hey, did Garcia find anything unusual about Alison’s wireless?” 

“No, records show that it was a basic DSL installation.” Morgan said, walking over to where she was standing at the computer. He glanced down at the wires behind the desk “Hey Prentiss?”

“Yeah?” 

“Help me move this table.” he said, reaching down, and she mirrored the movement. They slid the table back, and he looked down, frowning. 

“What do you got?” she asked. 

“You see this line right here?” he said, using the edge of a glove to lift it up.

“Yeah?” 

“This is what brings the internet from the street into the house.” he told her.

“Ok, so?” 

“This isn’t DSL.” he said. 

“It’s not?” Emily said, with her eyebrows raised. She didn’t know how he could immediately look at the mess of cables and pick that one out. They all looked like a bunch of wires to her.

“It’s a fiber optic cable. Completely different type of connection. We just found his mistake.” He told her. 

“Great, let’s get this to the team.” Emily grinned, and they walked out of the house, after putting the cable in an evidence bag and following all of the evidence collection procedures. 

“So, I can tell you have been spending a lot of time with Garcia.” she smirked as Morgan pulled the car away from the curb

“Yeah, how?”

“Cause you knew that off the top of your head, and didn’t have to call her about it. That means that you spend enough time with her to actually learn the stuff that she’s always talking about.”

“And?”

“And nothing. It’s just funny.” she said.

“Don’t say that like you haven’t gotten better with computers since you joined this unit too.” he huffed as he pulled up to the police station. 

Within moments of walking into the police station, they found Hotch, telling him what they had found. “If there is already an internet connection in the house, why does he bring his own with him? Is it the upload speed?” Hotch asked, looking at the cable in it’s bag.

“Fiber-optic allows him to stream large amounts of video,” Morgan said.

“And maintain a chat room.” Emily added. “That’s dozens of computers connected to him at once. He’d need a lot of bandwidth for something like that.” 

“We checked all of the ISPs. Why didn’t he show up?” Hotch said.

“I get mail, phone calls, people knock on my door all the time to see if I want to upgrade my internet.” Morgan said. 

“Yeah, I get them too.” Emily agreed. “And they’ll offer to come inside and demonstrate how much faster their connection is.” 

“Do you think that’s the ruse that gets him in the door?” Hotch asked.

“It makes sense.” Emily argued. “During his demonstration, he would have access to his victim’s computers.”

“On his way out he could ask for a glass of water, a distraction, something to buy time to plant that first camera.” Morgan added. 

“We need to find out what company owns this cable.” Hotch said.

“Detective Fordham’s already hunting that down, and there’s an ID number on it, so it shouldn’t take long.” Emily told him. 

“We’ll have JJ and Reid follow up. I need you two to track down who was in that chat room.” 

“Garcia finished her sweep?” Morgan asked.

“Yeah. Most of them were international. Three were local. I’ll bet the unsub knows one of them.” Hotch said, and the team all split up to go check the names. Morgan went to one address with two local cops, while Emily went to the second with another two locals. The man who opened the door looked disturbingly normal, but Emily had been in law enforcement for long enough that she knew that anyone could be the monster that you would hide from under your bed at night when you were a child. 

“FBI.” she said, holding up her badge. “We have a warrant” and one of the cops held it up from behind her. Fortunately, he didn’t bother trying to resist and surrendered immediately, which was a good thing considering he lived on the fourth floor of his building and there was no working elevator. The drive back to the police station was similarly uneventful. 

The interrogation was equally uneventful. The man, Jimmy Hodges, knew that they had everything on him and his only chance at possibly getting out of prison before he was old or dead was to cooperate. And prison inmates didn’t like people who get arrested on child porn charges. She asked him about what he knew about the unsub, and he was fairly helpful. 

“Watcher89” he told her. 

“Were there any other names?” she asked. 

“Not that I could find. I don’t like signing up for porn unless I know who’s running it.” Emily nodded and shoved all of her papers back into her file. She had everything she thought that she was going to get out of him. Besides, if he thought that she was leaving, he would try and give her anything else that he had, just so that she would help him out with the charges against him. She wasn’t surprised when it worked. 

“Mrs. Prentiss?” he said as she reached for the door. 

“Agent Prentiss.” she said stiffly.

“There’s something else you should know. He sent out a message. He said tonight would be the best one yet.”

“He’s attacking tonight?” 

“Of course. He knows you are watching him. He has to put on an extra good show.” Emily froze for a split second then rushed out of the interrogation room. It was urgent that the team learned about this. 

* * *

The team had the name of his next victim a few hours later. She, Morgan, and a few local officers rushed to her house, hoping that she would be there. It wasn’t night yet, when the unsub usually hunted his next victims. She should be there, and fine, and they could evacuate her. 

“Lucy Masters?” Morgan yelled after he knocked on the front door and it swung open ominously at his touch.

Emily’s hand went straight to her gun “This is the FBI, we’re coming in.” They both drew their guns in identical movements, and cautiously moved into the house. They cleared the house quickly, with disappointing results. 

“She’s not here, but her car is.” Morgan said as he walked into the living room where Emily was looking around. 

Emily startled at the sound of the tv turning itself on. “Hey, it just went on by itself.” The video playing was a woman, tied up and hanging on hooks in a room with a grey background. She was crying and struggling. “That’s Lucy Masters.” Emily said, then noticed the camera on top of the TV. 

“He’s recording us.” Morgan said grimly. He dropped a glove over the camera so the unsub couldn’t see them, and called Hotch. 

It wasn’t long before Hotch called back with an address, and they rushed to the scene as they were closer then the rest of the team, leaving one officer behind to guard the crime scene. 

“1823 Hudson. I got it. We are on our way.” Morgan said to the rest of the team who was listening in.

“Garcia it’s been 13 minutes since the signal went up live, Lucy might not have much time left.”

“I can buy you some time. Now that I have his physical address, I got my business all up in his. Garica went silent and the only things that Emily could hear on the phone was Garcia typing and Lucy’s whimpers. “No, no, not today.” some beeping was heard, and Emily wondered if it was good beeping or bad, and was about to ask when Garcia spoke up again “When your internet goes down it ruins your whole day doesn’t it, psycho.” 

“Good job Garcia!” Morgan said. “Let’s hope that was enough time to slow him down enough, we are about a block away.” 

The car had barely stopped when they threw themselves out of it, running for the building that the freezer was in. They ran up the steps and found the freezer with little problems. Morgan ran into the freezer first to see the unsub strangling poor Lucy. Her continued whimpers assured Emily that she was still alive, and now they just had to keep her that way. 

“Get off her! Get off her!” Morgan came up behind the unsub and started prying him off Lucy, who he was still tryin to kill despite now being surrounded by law enforcement. 

“No! No! No!” Robert Johnson kept yelling even as he was pulled off.

“Lucy?” Emily asked as she pulled the gag off of her and Detective Fordham got the chains off of her. 

“Get the paramedics in here!” Fordham yelled.

“It’s ok, you’re ok, you are going to be fine” Emily reassured the poor woman as they got her off the hooks and out of the freezer. She was quickly assorted out by the officers and Detective Fordham as Morgan restrained the unsub, making sure Lucy was safe from him. Two officers guarded the door to make sure that he couldn’t escape to finish what he started. Now that Lucy was safe, Emily finally took a good look around the freezer to see what else was hanging on hooks. 

“Morgan. It’s Doris Archer and Allison Kittridge.” she said pointing at the bodies closest to her. 

“You killed these women for your fans but this is where you kept them for yourself isn’t it you sick son of a bitch.” Morgan growled as the unsub struggled a bit, trying to get away. 

“What do you see when you look at them?” Emily asked.

“You’ll never understand what I did. But out there, my followers… they understand.” Johnson said. 

“Well, too bad there’s no wireless in prison.” Morgan scoffed, before handing him off to the two officers “Get him out of here!” They spent a long moment in silence, looking at the victims hanging on the hooks, all killed because one man couldn’t restrain his narcissism. A whole lot of good ruined by one bad man. 

* * *

  
  


The flight back home was quiet. They had all been working on very little sleep, and while they hadn’t fallen asleep yet, they were just sitting around quietly, talking. “I can tell you one thing.” Rossi said. 

“What?” Morgan asked. 

“No matter how much my editor begs me from now on, I am not going to ever get a social media account.” 

“Are you going to write a book about this case telling people why they shouldn’t?” Emily asked grinning. 

Rossi just rolled his eyes, but Morgan caught on where she was going with the point and added on “David Rossi’s 101 ways to not get yourself gruesomely killed. Number 1- Don’t put every detail of your life on social media.” 

“Number 2- be careful in sketchy roadside motels” Reid added 

“Number 3- that guy obsessed with fire? Unless he’s a firefighter, and sometimes if he is, be careful. That might be a bad thing.” JJ laughed. 

“Number 101- If you want to live a normal and not paranoid life, you should disregard almost everything I just said.” Hotch said dryly and the entire team started laughing. 

“Yeah, yeah, you are all comedians.” Rossi scowled at them. They all laughed again, before moving apart, Reid stretching out on the couch to get some sleep, and the rest of the team relaxing in some way. Morgan put his headphones on and JJ moved to the end of the plane to call Will and talk to her son on the phone. 

Emily glanced down at her own phone to see two missed texts- one from Mick, asking if they had finished the case, and another from an old partner of hers, asking if they could get dinner sometime, the same friend that she had gone out with the night before her first case with Mick. She replied with an yes to both, adding on to the text to her friend, Ericka, that she wasn’t sure when they would be able to get their schedules to match up, but it would be nice to try at least. She leaned back in her seat, and smiled. The case was done, and life was looking up. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the next chapter pre-written, so I'll post that in about a week, which will give me time to write the next chapter. Hopefully, that will be in two weeks, but no promises because college is really kicking my ass right now.


	9. The Emergency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -This chapter follows directly after the ending of the NCIS LA episode Missing (season 1, episode 13)

Chapter 9

Emily frowned as she looked around her most recent crime scene. It often seemed like that was all her life was- crime scenes and hotels and plane flights. And blood. Lots and lots of blood. Her phone rang, distracting her from her perusal of the latest unfortunate person to fall victim to a serial killer. She glanced at the display, expected it to be one of her team, but was surprised when it showed a different name- G.

"Hey G, I'm at a crime scene. What's up?" she asked. If it was something unimportant, he would just say call me later, and hang up. But if it was important, he would actually explain.

"It's Dom." G choked out, sounding like he was only barely able to keep from crying. Emily froze. He couldn't mean what she thought he did.

"G? What happened? What's wrong?" She said, hoping that the brilliant young agent wasn't dead.

"He was kidnapped. By unknown assailants who hired others to kidnap him. Probably terrorists who we took down at some point. He's gone. We have no idea where, no evidence of where he might possibly be, other then that he’s probably no longer in the US. We’ve been searching the last few days, and we still haven’t found anything. We need help, Em. I've exhausted my contacts that might know anything. Can you call yours?" he pleaded.

Why was it always at crime scenes that she got horribly bad news? Emily wondered "Of course. Anything. I'll call Clyde and pester him personally. Did you make an Interpol advisory?"

"Yes." he said. "Thank you so much."

"Anything." Emily sighed "Especially for something like this."

"I'll let you go, get back to your crime scene." G said, still sounding just as broken as he did before.

"I'll call you if I hear even the barest hint of a rumor." Emily told him. She heard a shuddering breath, then the dial tone.

Reid looked up at her, wide eyed. "What was that?"

"My best friend's probie was kidnapped by what probably was terrorists. Location unknown. Status unknown." she winced. She might not have spent much time with Dom, but he was so innocent, for an agent. He kind of reminded her of Reid, now that she was thinking about it. Smart, still somehow a little innocent, the youngest members of the teams. She would happily torture his kidnappers, if she could. 

"Oh god, that sucks." Reid winced. She could tell by his face that he was remembering his time with Tobias Hankle. Another asshole that Emily would have happily tortured if she had just a hint of a chance. 

"Yeah. We have just about everything we need, right?" she asked him, looking around the crime scene, trying to remember what she'd been thinking about before the call.

"Yeah." he said.

"Good. You're driving." she said, tossing him the keys. He caught them with ease- he was always way more athletic and less clumsy when he wasn't thinking about what he was doing. They got in the car, and Emily waited until it was moving before scrolling through her contacts. She hit the name and dialed.

"Clyde." She said when the familiar voice greeted her with surprise- she couldn't blame him, it had been a while since she had contacted him. "Are you busy? I need a favor."

"I have a minute, so go ahead." he said. She could hear him move away from where he had been, then a click and a lack of noise told her that he had moved into his office.

"My friend's agent was kidnapped. We think the agent might have already been taken out of the US. Could you possibly keep an eye out? And your agents too?"

"Your friend?" he asked.

"G Callen. NCIS. He's already made an Interpol advisory." She told him.

"The agent's name?" Clyde asked. Emily could hear tapping keys.

"Dominic Vail." She told him.

"Here he is." Clyde said. "God, he's young." he said.

"Way too young to go the way that these people probably want him to." Emily sighed. "A good kid."

"I'll put an agent on it, see what they can find out." Clyde told her.

"Thank you so much." Emily said, glancing up as they arrived at the police station. "I have to go, I've got a killer to catch. And I know you have a meeting to get back to that you ditched when I called you."

"You caught me." he laughed. "Yeah, I'll call you if anything appears. You can pass it on to his team, see if they come up with anything, knowing him and ideas of who might have taken him."

"Thanks Clyde." She smiled and hung up. One down, a lot more phone calls whenever she could find a spare second to go.

Reid glanced over at her, as they pulled up at the police station. "If you want to make more phone calls, I can go brief the team by myself." He offered.

"That would be awesome, thank you."

He waved a hand awkwardly. "If I was in that agent's circumstance, I would want to know that everyone possible was trying to find me. If phone calls will help save an agent, then you need to make phone calls. What do you want me to tell the team?"

"Tell them everything, they probably have some contacts too." She told him, grateful.

"I know this genius in the CIA, Kruger Spence. I met him during a case that we did, in the CIA. I could call him if you want me to." He offered.

"That would be amazing, thanks Reid." Emily smiled.

"Of course. I'll go update the team, then leave a message at the board where we usually meet up." Emily raised an eyebrow "CIA paranoia." he grinned shaking his head, "But when they are out to get you..."

"From what I heard about that case, he has reason to be paranoid." she said. She wouldn't tell the team that she had once written out a suicide note, herself. Although, hers had an additive- her mother would be told how she actually died, given her mother's clearance level, and the fact that she would never belive that Emily had actually committed suicide. It was more of the CIA making sure that her mother played her part, and didn't rock the boat too hard. No matter how much she valued her time in the CIA, catching the killers and terrorists that others couldn't, she was glad that she no longer was surrounded by so much paranoia. The BAU was, in comparison, a breath of fresh air, one she hadn't realized how much she needed until she had it.

"Yeah. He made some mistakes, but he wasn't the mole, and helped us catch him, in the end. And it's nice talking to someone who is just as smart as I am, someone who understands why I went into law enforcement, even though I could be doing so many other things." Spencer said, looking out over the lawn in front of the police station. Emily didn't think he was really seeing the people walking around, more likely using his memory to use, thinking over everything that had happened, all of the things that he had seen that he would never unsee.

"I'll make that call, then I'll come in, ok?" she said. He startled, then slid out of the car and into the police station. She sighed. The next call would be harder, and the first one had been hard enough.

  
  


She grabbed a burner out of her purse and put a sim card in it and dialed a number that only existed in her memory. She got the answering machine as she expected- a robotic voice telling her to leave a message at the beep. “Hey. Call me back. It’s kinda an emergency.” That was a carefully plotted code. ‘Kinda an emergency’ was an emergency that was serious, but nothing that might cause their countries to go to war over. ‘Really an emergency’ was worse, and ‘an extreme emergency’ was pending nuclear annihilation or something just as bad. 

Emily had called two other numbers and left similarly encoded messages on different voice mail boxes, before her phone rang ten minutes later, right as she was about to call another number. 

“Emily.” the accented voice greeted

“Orli.” she said back. Orli Elbaz was one of the contacts that Emily was the most cautious about. She wouldn’t give up intel, even if she had it, unless it would give her something. This was the woman who would do anything to get what she wanted. She had killed, tortured, and slept her way up the ranks, and nothing would stop her until she had what she wanted. And what Emily wanted usually wasn’t what she wanted. They worked for two different countries that didn’t always get along. And Orli was just as loyal to Israel as Emily was to the US. They had been enemies before and had also worked together. It just depended on the day. 

“What do you need?”

“There is an agent who had been kidnapped by terrorists. I was wondering if your people had heard anything about current plots.” she said carefully. She would not give this woman anything more then that. She didn’t want Mossad to know more then they already did, even though with the director’s daughter in NCIS, they probably knew everything already. Emily had heard a lot of scoffs and muttered predictions of what would happen throughout the US intelligence community when it got out that NCIS had David working for them. In Emily’s opinion, it was the stupidest thing that she had ever heard of. You don’t give the daughter of the director of a foreign agency all of your secrets. Emily was glad that she had never met David, though she had met DiNozzo once. She would have too many problems not scoffing in the woman’s face. Or trying to break it. 

“You should keep better track of your agents.” Orli scoffed. 

“He is young. Not even fully trained.” Emily sighed. 

“I have not heard anything.” Orli said. “I will tell you if I do.” she said. Emily resisted scoffing- trying to help out your agent’s position in American intelligence are you? “Shalom,” Orli said.    
  


“Shalom.” Emily said and hung up. She needed to get back to the team. She had been gone far too long already.    
  


* * *

  
  


That night in the hotel, Emily stared up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. She stared through the dark for an hour before giving up- there would be no sleep tonight. Normally, she would just go over the case, but there was nothing to go over for this one- they had gone over everything and there was nothing to go over- they had been over everything enough times that she practically had the files memorized. A nagging thought rose to the top of her head and she frowned, before slipping soundlessly out of her bed and grabbing her phone off her nightstand. She waited until she was in the bathroom with the door shut before she turned the lights on, so she didn't wake JJ up. She hit the speed dial, and wasn't surprised when it was answered within seconds.

"Please tell me you have something." G said.

"Maybe. It's just a hunch. If you wanted someone out of the country, and this person was a hostage, how would you do it? It wouldn't be a plane, that's far too obvious, and it isn't that easy to smuggle a resisting person through airports, even if you have a private plane. This guy wouldn't want to risk getting caught by border patrol with a hostage, so he wouldn't go through Mexico, much less Canada. And he wouldn't want to travel far. So that leaves one option. A boat. And one that leaves within hours of getting Dom- you don't want to risk getting caught with him on board. Something large, so you can hide among everyone else. But not something like a cruise ship- too many people that could catch you. What does that leave?"

"A cargo ship." G breathed. "Emily, you are a genius. I'll go give this to Eric and see if he comes up with any possible ships. I'll call you back." all she heard was the dial tone, and Emily yawned, suddenly tired. She had gotten the thought off her brain now, and it was up to G and Eric now. They would call when they found something. For now, Emily would sleep.

  
  


It was another hour before Emily woke up from a phone call. She hit the answer quickly before it could wake JJ up, but waited until she was back in the bathroom before she actually answered. "Yeah?" she croaked. She somehow looked worse after sleeping then she had before going to bed.

"Emily. We figured it out." G said.

"What happened?"

"It's a cargo ship, called the Hamidah. A Turkish ship. Headed to Egypt. Can you call your Interpol contacts? We are going to try to get there in time, but I don't know if we'll make it, given that we are several days behind, and even with a direct flight, it will take time. Hetty's pulling favor's to get us the fastest jet she can, but-" he broke off.

"Yeah, I'll call them." Emily yawned again.

"Promise me you will sleep after, you sound half dead." G said.

"You sound just as bad." Emily pointed out. "I'll call them, tell me if you find anything new." she said, and barely waited for G's acknowledgement before she hung up. She glanced at the time on her phone- fortunately it was a decent time in London even if it wasn't in the US.

She called Clyde and wasn't surprised when he picked up on the first dial. "Emily, what is it?" He sounded worried.

"They have a lead. He's on a Turkish ship called the Hamidah. It’s docking in Egypt. They are going to try to intercept it, but they don't know if they can get there in time. Can you send an agent?"

"Of course Emily. Send me everything you know and everything they have been able to find about the ship, I'll give it to some of my agents. Hopefully they will get there in time, so the agent has a familiar face to pull him out, but if not my agents will. Better an unfamiliar but friendly face then nothing." Clyde said "Like that one time with the team in-"

"If you even think about referring to what I know you are about to I will" Emily stopped to yawn "I don't know, do something. I'm too tired to think up death threats. I'll send you the intel, so you can give it to your agents. Thank you, Clyde."

"Anytime, Emily." he said, sounding fond. "I'll call you when anything happens." he said, then hung up. Emily immediately crawled back into her bed, and despite the knot of tension crawling in her stomach, she fell asleep with ease.

* * *

  
  
  


Everything seemed like a normal day when Emily woke up. They got up, they ate breakfast, they went to the police station, they got called out to another crime scene. It was utterly normal. That did nothing to soothe Emily's now upset stomach. She knew that there was no way that anyone would know anything yet, there was no way to breach the ship until it docked, and there would probably be other boats in the area watching it, but she couldn't help the nerves. She knew her team noticed- she briefed them on what had happened in the middle of the night, and they were doing everything that they could to keep her distracted, to not think about what was happening on the other side of the planet. There would have been no way for Emily to get there in time to do anything, but she still wished she was there. She had thought watching the team go in danger from the ops center, when she could see everything that was happening, and hear updates every few seconds from all of the agents was bad. This was worse. Dom was so innocent, for an agent. He didn't deserve what would likely happen to him. Nobody did, really, but Dom especially not. And this was all for what? Being the weakest link on a team of specialists? She felt so bad for him, he had to be so scared.

Now that she had realized their similarities, she was sticking closer to Spencer, and she knew the team had also noticed that, and had reshuffled themselves so that she was with him, instead of being with Rossi or Morgan as he usually was. They were accommodating her paranoia, and she loved that she didn't even have to mention anything. It showed how well they knew her, or at least the version of her that she had portrayed. It also showed how much she trusted them- she didn't even try to hide her feelings about everything that was going on. She could, if she wanted to, she was an undercover specialist after all, but she didn't try. From the moment she asked Reid to ask his contact, she had accepted that the team would learn another tiny piece of her carefully hidden past, and she was ok with that. She thought it was better if they knew that she was more then she seemed, and while she never outright said that she was an undercover specialist, the amount of contacts she had shown to have throughout their cases and during this was large, and she knew some of them were picking up on it. Mostly it was Hotch and Rossi, as the older more experienced team members. If Gideon was still a member of the team, he would have known everything, just thanks to everyone that he knew. She had met him before she had joined the team, not that either of them had ever told anyone. Gideon had a lot more contacts in the CIA then he had let on, and they had never worked together, but had met briefly. The sort of hi, passing in the corridors sort of thing. She had actually been in the CIA building the day the team was doing that one case, so long ago. It was weird to think that if she had just gone up a few floors she might have run into them. Still, Gideon was out, and he deserved it, he had been serving his country for a long time, and while the CIA probably knew where he was, Emily didn’t. She could find him if she wanted to, but wouldn’t. He was retired, and out, which was what every CIA agent, even the unofficial ones, all wanted someday. She would not disturb his peace.

  
  


Emily was in the coroner's office, discussing the latest victim with the poor overworked woman, when her phone rang. "Excuse me, this is probably important." She smiled and started walking out of the room. When Reid started to follow her, she waved him back to the table. There was no reason to waste her time when Reid could stay.

"Prentiss." she said briskly, recognizing Clyde's number.

"Good news." he said, and Emily could tell he was grinning. She felt an answering smile flicker across her face. "Your friend, Callen, and his team arrived right as the ship was pulling into the port. My people and your friend’s stormed the ship together. We got Agent Vail. He's injured, but better then we had hoped, given the amount of blood in the crime scene photos you forwarded to us."

"Clyde, I will owe you a million favors for the rest of my life." Emily said, trying to hold back tears.

"Oh, you will regret that someday." He grinned. "Anyway, the group that took him was someone your people knew, and there is currently a lot of shouting from one of the team, Sam I think his name is, at one of the teenage terrorists. Apparently they knew each other. All of the terrorists will be extracted into American custody, and Agent Vail should be cleared to travel in a few days. Callen would have called you himself, but he is busy trying to keep control of his partner and check on his agent, and give his boss a sitrep all at the same time. I figured that I could take the honors." he grinned again. Emily leaned against the wall she had been standing next to, and slowly slid down it.

"Thank you so much Clyde." Emily said.

"For a million favors, anything Emily." He said. "I need to get back to the clean up. The people in charge of the port are annoyingly irritated that they weren't told. One of my agents has a theory that they were in on it. It wouldn't surprise me, to be honest. And if she's right, then we might have caught an even bigger fish then we thought. If you will close your eyes once, you will close them a lot more."

"That's amazing, Clyde. Thanks."

"Of course, Emily. Bye."

"Bye," Emily said and hung up. She tilted her head back against the wall, and focused on taking a slow breath in.

"Emily, are you ok?" Reid said from above her. He looked strangely blurry.

Emily blinked fast, trying to will the tears into disappearing. Fortunately, it mostly worked. Her eyes were still a bit watery, but she wasn't crying. She grinned up at him. "They found him. He's alive. Injured, but alive." she said, pulling herself up into a standing position with the help of his outstretched hand.

"That's amazing!" Ried said, pulling her into a hug. Emily's eyebrows shot up, but she went willingly. Reid didn't usually like physical contact, so she would take what was offered without hesitation. It showed how nervous he also was about this- even never having met any of the team or Dom.

"Yeah, everyone's really relieved." she grinned. She felt like her face was going to split in half, she hadn't grinned this much for a long time.

"You want to go and tell the team? I have everything we need here."

"Sure. You are still driving, though, I need to tell all of the contacts that I roused that they can stand down." she told him, pulling the burner phone out of her pocket. He just grinned, he liked driving, just didn't do it much as he was usually immersed in a file during the drives, so the team just took the driver's wheel without thinking about it. He didn't drive his own car much as the Amtrak was so much more convenient for him. And, as Emily had often suspected, it gave him more reading time.

The stand down orders were much faster then the actual reading in of the contacts- just various encoded tests. When they got to the police station, Emily once again waved Reid inside- there was one call that she needed to do in person. She dialed and waited for the answer.

"Emily?" Mick asked.

"We got him. We have Dom, and he's alive." She grinned. She could hear the normal chatter pattern of Coop's base- the team talking and people working out, so she wasn't surprised when Mick cheered out loud.

"That's amazing babe." he grinned.

"I know. They are cleaning everything up as we speak with my Interpol contacts. Thank you so much for calling your contacts, even if they didn't get anything from them."

"For a missing agent, much less one of your friends, anytime babe." He grinned. "I'll see you when you get home?"

"Yeah, I don't know how long this case will last, but see you then, if you haven't gotten called out yourself."

"Hopefully not, we should celebrate. Our teams too?" he said, and she heard his team's agreement in the background. He had told them all about it, in an attempt to utilize their contacts as well. And saving an agent's life from what Dom was going through, even if they weren't from your agency was something everyone was willing to celebrate.

"My team probably will agree with that, Reid's telling them now."

"You should go in. Call me when you have a spare second." he said, still among his team, so Emily heard when he went somewhere slightly quieter.

"I will." she promised.

There was a long moment of silence, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to say the words that they hadn't said to each other yet. "I should probably get back to work." he said instead.

"I should get back to my case." Emily sighed.

"Bye." he said, sounding somewhat wistful.

"Bye" she said, and the line clicked. I love you too she thought. She just hoped that she got the courage to actually say it soon. Emily sighed, and headed inside. This unsub would need all of the attention she could give them, and she had been very lacking so far. She wouldn't change anything, of course, but she couldn't help but feel that she should have given their case more attention. She walked into the station to see the relived grins of her team and several of the other cops in the room- they must have overheard, and even if they had no idea who Dom was, and might not have even meet any NCIS agents before, but the relief at hearing of an agent saved from a fate like the one that Dom would have had was contagious.

Emily went over to the board and stared at it, looking at the pictures of the women that the unsub had captured, kept for a few days, then discarded. The bodies were all found with knife cuts and practically drained of blood- on the latest, it almost looked like the unsub had attempted to try the Death of a Thousand Cuts on her. The cuts were all thin and carefully away from anything that would cause a quick death. It was the blood loss and shock that killed these women after hours of torture.

Reid noticed her focus and he drifted over, the rest of the team following. "The coroner thinks that he has a beginner's knowledge of human anatomy- like he read a few anatomy textbooks, but he's certainly has never been to medical school. The cuts aren't clean enough for that, and the first victim shows hesitation marks before he slipped up and accidentally hit an artery. The most recent victim shows absolutely no signs of hesitation and he succeeded in drawing out her death as long as he could- there were no mistakes here." he told them.

"So, he has to have somewhere that he is killing them. Somewhere remote enough that nobody will hear them scream, or see the blood and wonder why there is blood everywhere. With how on edge the city is, I'm surprised that we haven't been getting calls over every drunk person on the sidewalk and every oil spill of people thinking it is blood." Emily sighed. It was not a good time to be a blonde woman between the ages of 25 to 30 in Orlando, Florida.

"There aren't many areas with that amount of remoteness in the comfort zone." Reid said, focusing on the map that he had been scribbling on the entire case.

"Reid, focus on that. JJ, I want you to work with the press some more. Get them telling women to travel in groups, to be careful. With this unsubs' love of chloroforming them from behind, not being alone might be the only thing that saves them. Have them stay together and not break away from the group. Or better yet, stay home- this unsub doesn't seem to have gathered up the courage to attack women in their homes yet. And emphasize this is for all women, not just the unsub's target age and description- if he can't find what he wants, he will attack whoever he can see. Rossi, I want you with her. Use your fame for good use- people know you and trust you. If you are helping warn them, they will want to do it. Morgan- you and I will be checking out the latest crime scene." Hotch told them. Emily paused- he hadn't said her name. "Emily" he said, turning towards her after a pause. "I want you to go to sleep. Don't try and tell me you got anything more then a few hours at most last night, and it wasn't restful sleep anyway." He frowned at her, and she had to agree- she was tired, but she could work through it if she had to. "If you don't want to go back to the hotel, there is a couch in the break room. Use it."

She knew from his tone that he wasn't going to accept any arguments, so she sighed and agreed. "Got it, Hotch." she said, moving towards the break room. She toed her shoes off before flopping on the old broken in couch. Despite that, it was extremely comfortable and she had to stop herself from yawning- she was more tired than she thought. She unclipped her holster from her belt and stuffed it under the pillow. Within seconds of her head hitting the pillow, she was asleep, thanks to the training that she had- when you had the chance to, sleep.

* * *

She was woken by one of the officers shaking her, and barely managed to keep from pulling her gun on him. Despite that, he clearly still saw the movement, and jumped back, startled. "A hint, officer-" she said, pushing a stray hair out of her eyes. "If waking someone that you don't know, someone who carries a gun, it's a better idea to shake their feet if they don't wake up to the sound of their name being called. I'm not the only one on my team that has a deadly set of reflexes, and I got mine the hard way." she told him. The young officer blushed bright red.

'Yes ma'am, sorry ma'am. The detective in charge of the case sent me to wake you, your team is all off at a location that they think might be where he kills them. They found a possible clue to who the unsub might be. We are closer here then they are, so your boss said to wake you and have you come with us, so there is a profiler there to talk to him, if he's there." the officer said.

"Ok, who is it?" She asked, shoving her feet in her shoes and clipping the holster onto her belt. She did a quick check of her pockets to make sure that nothing had escaped while she was asleep, and then checked her watch. Four hours later then the last time she checked it.

"Myself, Officer Hunter, and Officer Andrews, ma'am."

"Stop calling me ma'am- it's Prentiss, or Emily." she told him, leading the way out of the room, glancing at his uniform as she did so "Thank you, Officer O'Brian." she said, and his blush only got darker. Mick would laugh so hard when she told about this later she thought absentmindedly, cracking her neck and mentally getting herself in the headspace to confront this unsub. They met up with Hunter and Andrews, both women who looked just as competent and equally ready to get this unsub in handcuffs as Emily was.

"Ok. Let's split up. Two cars. No lights, no sirens. Do not draw attention to yourself. Act like it's a normal patrol. No need to give up the element of surprise unless we have to. Now, have any of you worked together before?"

“Hunter and I have, ma'am." Officer Andrews said. "And here's the warrant, hot off the printer." they all started walking out towards the cars, and Emily frowned.

"Ok. I want you two together, then. I will be with Officer O'Brian. When we get there, I want you two to cover the back while we cover the front. While I don't like to clear a house with an unsub who probably has a large knife with just four of us, it will have to do until the rest of the team gets there or we get more back up. Everything we know about this unsub says that he is not the type to go quietly, and the last thing we need is someone injured. Shoot to kill if you have to, got it?"

"Yes, ma'am." they chorused, the two women splitting off towards one car while Officer O'Brian led her to another.

Emily slid in the passenger's seat of the car and immediately called Garcia, slipping her comm in her ear.

"Hello, oh Badass Warrior Women. Right now, my maps are telling me that you have a 15 minute ETA to the unsub's house. The rest of the team is ten minutes behind you, though with how Morgan is driving, it might be shorter."

Emily grinned, that would be Morgan "One sec, Garcia." she said, and waited for the answering mumble before she pulled the phone away from her ear. "I want you to punch the gas- use lights and sirens until we get within range of the unsub's house. And tell Andrews that too." she told O'Brian.

"Yes ma'am" he grinned, and the car immediately went from the normal driving that he was doing to full car chase mode. From what she could see of his face, he looked like he was enjoying it- it wasn't often you get told to speed by a fed after all. As the lights and sirens got people out of their way and he radioed what she had said over to the other car, Emily turned her attention back to Garcia.

"Ok, what has the team discovered at the crime scene."

"Not much that we didn't already know. From what I've overheard, the unsub apparently likes to watch the blood drip everywhere. why do serial killers have to be so icky?" Garcia complained.

"I have no idea, Garcia. Or, at least not one that you want to hear. Can you patch me through to the rest of the team?" she asked, and almost immediately she could hear the team. "Emily on comms. Thanks Garcia." she added.

"Anytime. Wonder Women out." she said, and Emily's phone went dead.

"Hotch, anything you want me to do, or not do?"

"Well, don't get within 25 feet of him." he said dryly. "From what we've seen here, he is definitely a sadist. Don't let him get his hand on you. He likes torture. Other then that, you know the playbook just as well as we do. Be careful, and we will be there as soon as we can." He told her.

"Got it." she said, running through everything she knew about sadists in her head. Emily wasn't exactly inexperienced with sadists, but it felt weird to not have her team with her. She had gotten so used to them having her back that it was strange to not have them there. She played with the hair tie on her wrist, pulling it back and feeling it snap back into place. She took one long breath then let it out. "ETA?" she asked Officer O'Brian.

"Four minutes, ma'am." he told her. "We're going to have to slow down soon, in this area people listen for sirens." Emily looked out to see a rough neighborhood, a clear contrast to the tourist areas that she had seen so far. Even the dumpsites weren't that bad- all under various overpasses and abandoned parking lots, but still in good parts of town. She wondered if a hatred of those who had what he didn't was a factor in the profile. From what she had seen, it probably was. This neighborhood wasn’t very nice, and all of the victims had lived in nice neighborhoods, even if they weren’t the richest in the city. The unsub was probably punishing those who had what he didn't for having it. It was surprising that he didn't take those things, though.

"Got it." Emily sighed.

"ETA 9 minutes." Morgan said in her ear. "And we aren't going to try for stealth so we should be able to get through a bit faster then you will."

"Got it Morgan, thanks." Emily said. The minutes seemed to speed by, until she and Officer O'Brian arrived at the dilapidated house. They immediately got out of the car, Hunter and Andrews heading for the back of the house while she and O'Brian ran through the junk strewn yard for the door.

When the door opened, Emily ducked behind a large ride on lawn mower by instinct, and her instinct was proven right when she glanced up over it. "Gun!" she yelled it, and O'Brian dropped behind a nearby large stack of plywood. She could hear Morgan swearing in her comm, and the engine revved even harder then it had been previously. She delegated that to the back of her mind as shots rang out, spraying over the yard, and Emily swore as she heard them ping off her tractor and his wood. She heard him grunt, and saw the blood dripping off his leg. "Officer down." Emily yelled. She could hear increased swearing from her comm, but Hotch snapped at them and they all shut up.

"There is no way inside from back here, he's blocked the back door shut." Hunter said. "We are going to try and get around to back you up, but we will be going directly into his line of fire if we do."

“Got it. Don’t do anything stupid.” Emily told them, eyeing the distance between her tractor and O’Brian’s plywood. Emily slowly slipped up over the tractor and put down some covering fire as she ran towards O'Brian, staying as crouched low as she could. She grabbed his bulletproof vest and used it to drag him behind her tractor as it seemed more bulletproof then his wood. She grunted as she felt a bullet hit her thigh, but didn't stop until they were safe again. She lifted herself back up and O'Brian followed her, only to fall back again as another bullet hit him. "Stay down." Emily said, then lifted her gun and aimed. One shot, but it was a good one, and the unsub fell over. Emily got up and limped over to him, but he was dead. She kicked the gun out of his hand anyway. "All clear, unsub down!" she yelled and Hunter and Andrews appeared from around the side of the house and ran to O'Brian. Emily limped back over to O'Brian and watched as they checked him over.

"It's ok, Nick, it got caught by the vest, it didn't go through. You might have some broken ribs though." Andrews said, "Breathe." she reassured him.

Emily wavered and sat down hard on the tractor. Now that everything was over, she really hurt. Leg shots always hurt a lot. And sitting down hurt for a while. And standing. And doing just about anything now that she was thinking about it. At least she hadn’t got shot in the ass. That hurt like a bitch. 

"Ma'am?" she heard Hunter say, but everything went black.

* * *

  
  
  


Emily woke up in the hospital, she could tell without even opening her eyes. There was an obnoxious beeping, the lights were way too bright, and everything smelled like antiseptic and bleach. And it felt like she was floaty. "I hate painkillers." she sighed.

"Emily?" she heard JJ.

"Hmm." Emily grumbled back.

"Hey there you." JJ sounded relieved. "You scared us. I'm going to grab a doc, stay awake, ok?"

"Yeah." Emily said, still not opening her eyes. If everything was this bright with them closed, she didn't want to open them until she had to.

Within moments, she was back. "Agent Prentiss." An unfamiliar voice said, presumably the doctor.

"Hmm?" Emily said.

"Can you open your eyes for me?" Emily grumbled, but did, then immediately slamming them shut again.

"Bright." she complained. The lights were dimmed a few seconds later and she managed to pry her eyelids open again, and keep them open. The team was crowded around the room, which probably wasn't meant to hold the amount of people that it was, but they seemed fine with their various uncomfortable looking positions.

"Well, Agent Prentiss, you are doing really well. The bullet hit pretty much the perfect place in your thigh. There were no breaks or cracks in the bone, and it managed to miss all of the arteries too. The only reason you collapsed is you were moving around too much and when your body started to come down from the adrenaline overload, your body took that to mean it could completely shut down. I ran a bunch of tests anyway, and they all came back normal, you are fine. I'm going to observe overnight, but you should be out of here by noon tomorrow." The doctor said.

"Could she fly?" Hotch asked.

"She should be fine, and it certainly would be less uncomfortable then the drive to DC." the doctor said. "Just try and keep the wound elevated. Ice occasionally to keep the swelling down. Have any of you been shot before?" he asked, and got several nodds. "Well, then you will know what to do. Keep the bandages clean, take the antibiotics, keep the wound clean and dry. Keep watch for any signs of infection. I would advise her to go into her normal doctor in the next few days. I'll give you the prescription for the medications that she will need, for enough for the next week or so, but she needs to get more from her doctor." he said.

"Got it." Emily croaked. It wasn't the first time she had been shot, she knew the routine well.

"She's more coherent then I would expect." the doctor commented, looking down at her.

"Always have burned through painkillers fast." Emily said. He moved his hand towards the painkiller button "No more yet. Want to be awake for a while. How's O'Brian?"

The doctor glanced over at Hotch, who nodded. "Officer O'Brian broke some ribs with the bullet that hit his chest. Those seem to be doing ok so far, we just have to watch his breathing. As per the bullet to his leg, he wasn't quite as lucky as you were. It broke the leg, but it wasn't that bad of a break, and he should be up on his feet and back to normal in a few months."

"Thanks, doc." she croaked.

"Of course. Push the call button if you need me." he said, and left her with the team.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"About midnight." Rossi said, glancing down at her watch.

"Ugh.'' Emily said. It didn't feel like midnight. She guessed that was the effect of hospital lights and rooms with no windows- you had no concept of time. "Was supposed to call Clyde."

"He called you, I answered the phone. He said to stop getting shot so much, and that he would handle telling your NCIS friends." Hotch told her. She relaxed, then stiffed.

"The burner?"

"I put it in your duffel bag, and haven't answered any of the calls that came to it. The less I know, the better, I thought." Hotch said.

"Good. There's some... questionable... people on there." Emily sighed.

"Ok, team. Emily is ok, and we all need sleep. I know that you won't agree to leave her alone, so a rotating guard." Hotch said. Just then, JJ walked back into the room. Emily hadn't even noticed her leave.

"There's someone who would like to talk to you." she held out her phone to Emily, placing it up against Emily's ear. Emily pushed her shoulder up until it held the phone in place, and JJ took a step back. The rest of the team filtered out the door- JJ apparently had first watch.

"Hey there, love." Mick's familiar accent said in her ear. "You scared me there." JJ walked out of the room and hovered in the doorway, her back to Emily in an attempt to give her a little privacy.

"Hey babe." Emily said, tears stinging in her eyes. "I guess that party is going to have to be put off a bit, huh." she yawned.

"Yeah, but you're okay, and that's all that matters." He said. His rumbling voice soothed her, and she fell asleep to the sound of his voice in her ear. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know that I messed with Canon more then a little bit there. In my defense, Dom was always one of my favorite characters, at least for the 12 episode that he was a main character in. I couldn't resist the urge to save him, and as I've already kind of though canon on it's head, why not through it a little more? Rewatching episodes 13, 21, and 22 to write this chapter showed me how little we really learn about Dom's time in captivity. The idea of Dom being held hostage in LA all of the months that he was struck me as odd- why would they hold an agent hostage in the very city that he works in? If he got loos, it would be very easy for him to get help, and the terrorists would be caught the second he got to law enforcement. So I figured that he was probably taken out of the county and only brought back in to trade him for Keshwar, the leader of the TaJ. So I used the very ship that smuggled Mo into the county as the ship that smuggled Dom out. There will be more explanations of my thought process in the next chapter, which hopefully will be soon, but seeing as I'm approaching finals season, I will either have that out sometime next week, or 2-3 weeks from now. I hope you liked it and please review!


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